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By Joe Lemire

Before 17-year-old Linda Fruhvirtová took the court for her first match in the main draw of a Grand Slam, she entered the US Open’s indoor practice facility, set down her red Wilson tennis bag and immediately took out a virtual reality headset.

Tennis legend Martina Navratilova has signed on as an advisor to Sense Arena after seeing a demo and calling it “about as realistic as you can get without actually hitting the tennis ball.”

Founded in Prague by Bob Tetiva—whose father, Jaroslav, was a member of the 1952 and 1960 Olympic basketball teams for the former Czechoslovakia—Sense Arena is a partner of 30 pro hockey teams, including the Los Angeles Kings, New Jersey Devils and Vegas Golden Knights among its five NHL clients. It has begun accepting pre-orders for its tennis product, which costs $300 for a yearlong subscription and, for a limited time, includes a free haptic racquet.

“You don’t have time in any sport to think, you just have to react,” says Tetiva, the CEO. “And to learn that, you can either play hundreds and thousands of matches in hockey or tennis, which will be very exhausting for your body or—here comes the beauty of virtual reality—we can throw you in the same environment in the first person to a controlled place where it’s actually only about you.”

The company, which has North American offices near Boston, Toronto and now Tampa, has raised $3 million earlier this year and $5.2 million in total, with participation from the Boston Bruins’ top scorer, David Pastrňák.

Available now on Meta Quest 2 and soon to be expanded to other VR providers, Sense Arena’s tennis software is currently usable as a one-person training tool, with multiplayer capability likely for the future as well as other updates, including the ability to practice serves and a pro-level strategy feature.

Users hold the proprietary racquet—which houses a Quest controller and vibrates when a player makes contact with a virtual tennis ball—and can replicate shots and volleys as well as engage in other cognitive drills.

“Forehand, backhand, it’s all about reaction, and it’s about repetition,” Navratilova says. “And then you get [to see] what the end result is, so you can fix it. The ball tells you what you did wrong. So you get that immediate feedback in the safety of your home.”

Navratilova has suggested some tennis drills to be incorporated and, even after her first product demo, recommended the inclusion of a pause button to help players visualize the angles of shots better. “Immediately she was intuitive giving us feedback on the existing product,” Tetiva says.

Tetiva plans to market the product to both elite teams—colleges, academies and the like—as well as individual players. B2C is likely to be the predominant sector because of its sheer size, he says, “but the credibility is built through the top tier of tennis.”

Yannick Yoshizawa, a former college player at South Florida who worked nearly nine years at the WTA, was hired to lead the tennis business at Sense Arena. The three main pillars of the sport, he says, are physical, technical and mental training. Physical and technical are more easily isolated in practice, but he has bought in to the potential of VR to train the mental component.

That was the early thesis of Tetiva when he began developing a hockey program. He had played some pro basketball in the Czech Republic before entering the IT industry when his son began showing interest in hockey. Sports training has evolved considerably in almost areas, he realized, with a notable exception.

“One piece is kind of neglected, and that’s your brain,” he says, “which actually controls everything.”

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

By John Portch

Winning is great – but at what cost?

“In Australian sport, we went through a period where we were highly successful, across numerous sports, but there were often implications for athletes’ mental health,” says Ben Robertson, the National Wellbeing Manager at Tennis Australia.

Robertson is talking to the Leaders Performance Institute about the change in thinking that came about in Australian sport.

He says: “The Australian government was looking at this and asking ‘why are we funding this? Winning titles and obtaining individual results are great, but we are potentially leaving these athletes with limited  life skills or other skills for transitioning into a life beyond sport?’ Sport has always wrestled with this, especially as it’s gone professional in the last 30 years or so.”

Robertson is joined by his colleague Nicole Kriz, Tennis Australia’s National Lead of Tours, Camps, College and Wellbeing. The duo are speaking from a camp in France where they have travelled with a group of 13 and 14-year-old players to compete in an international competition.

It is not unknown, Kriz explains, for a 24-hour trip from Melbourne to a European destination to be delayed by 12 hours or more. “And these are young kids,” she says. “Life can throw anything at them, such as travel disruption, and they need coping mechanisms. We’re not even talking about competition yet. If they don’t have the skills to deal with that then they’re really not going to cope once they’re here on the ground, and that has to have a follow-on effect on their enjoyment, being an athlete, their ability to tour, and being able to turn up and compete.”

“If they can’t find a way off-court, they’re not going to find a way on-court,” adds Robertson. To that end, Tennis Australia has committed to proactive, holistic development of its junior players through its Wellbeing and Life Skills Programs.

The latter was born from conversations between Kriz and Robertson at a time when Kriz was working with Australian Pro Tour athletes on tennis’ WTA Tour. These athletes’ performances on court and touring capacity were being affected by issues off-court.

The Life Skills Program consists of eight units: independent living, working and living with others, travel, personal development, education and career, managing money, personal health, living overseas and other cultures. These programs  seek to develop wellbeing-focused skills such as regulation and self-awareness and life skills such as cooking, doing the laundry, or buying a ticket at a railway station.

“We want to develop resilient, capable, independent kids,” says Kriz, “If we do then the parents are going to be more confident about their child’s functioning and touring capabilities as well.”

It is an ethical responsibility that Tennis Australia takes seriously. “We’re taking these kids away from their No 1 support network in their parents, friends and their school environment,” says Robertson. “It’s down to us to develop their off-court skills, and as trivial as some of those may seem, you’re developing the base for them to build on, so that when they are on the tour at 18 or even earlier, by themselves potentially, they have these skills so that it’s not foreign to them when they get there. If they have to do it later in life then the anxiety and the frustration kicks in.

“It seems really basic and a lot of it is, but it’s our responsibility on tours. We’re here to compete, we’d love to win, but that’s not the be-all and end-all of the tour and we try to explain that to the kids and the parents. Winning’s great, it’s part of the process, but you spend so much more time off-court. Of 24 hours a day you probably play for two. You’ve got 22 hours left to sleep, develop relationships; the list goes on. It’s the same for any sport.”

Holistic development

Robertson observes that the narrative in sport is gradually shifting from the idea that holistic development automatically translates into competition to the view that athletes are people who just happen, in this case, to play tennis.

“I think that’s shifted in all sports because we cannot guarantee that we’re going to take a 13-year-old and, a few years later say they are going to be the No 1 in the world. But if we’re taking them away for four, five or six weeks, we’re going to give them the best experience, develop them as a person, and over time, if they go on to be a great player, fantastic.”

Both Robertson and Kriz make the point that their programs are still in their infancy, but these initiatives are indicative of that shift in wider sport, particularly with regards to wellbeing. “The analogy we have with the kids is that they all go to the gym no questions asked. They’ll do prehab; they don’t question that from a physical point of view. What we say is ‘this stuff here is prehab for your mental health and wellbeing, which allows you to perform at your best, whatever that might be’.”

The Wellbeing Program, much like the Life Skills Program, is a focal point for players and coaches who tour with Tennis Australia.

“There’s five pillars within our Wellbeing Program: ‘mindfulness’, ‘learn’, ‘giving back’, inside that is gratitude, ‘physical activity’ and ‘connection’,” says Robertson, who taken the athletes through some box breathing techniques at breakfast that morning. “The theme for this week with the under-13 and 14 girls is mindfulness. We’ve done some deliberate practice whether it be in a classroom setting or outside around ‘what is mindfulness? Why is it important? How does it translate to on-court? Why is it important as a human being? How does it tie to your mental health?’ And then there’s conversation around ‘these things are great but how do you manage it?’ So you’re not always thinking about the future and you’re not holding onto the past. You do that anyway, but how do you then quieten your mind for short periods?”

Direct observation is a useful way of assessing transference. “Some kids will practise during the game; at the change of ends they’ll sit and you’ll observe them. Two nights ago at dinner, I asked a player to name ten emotions. They could give me four and then got stuck. I said ‘right, you’ve got to come back tomorrow and give me the other six’. I asked the player ‘how did you feel?’ We tied it back to on-court; they won the match and had a bit of trouble in the second set. ‘What were you feeling? Let’s name those.’ That’s the ad hoc opportunity to teach them around emotional literacy and language and go ‘you don’t always go to the big ones – there’s little ones in between. And how do you self-regulate? What are the tools?’ They’re just ad hoc conversations but learning is ongoing the whole time.”

Kriz stresses the importance of educating the athletes to help increase their self-awareness in addition to broadening their language and understanding of stress responses. “When you are putting some language and context to it, kids can refer to that quite easily. If they’re unaware and they don’t have the language around the self-awareness, then they’re just going to react and respond and behave without thinking. So if we can put some understanding and some context around it, then they are better at identifying where they are in this and it’s not just ‘situation-respond’.”

Losing streaks stand out as an area where such tools could be useful. “What’s a ‘loss’?” asks Kriz. “We try to change the language around that. We haven’t spoken about results at all on this trip because this is a developmental tour both on and off court. We try to remove that pressure already from results.

“So if they’ve already heard that language and that education at 14, they can refer back to that at 17. It’s not black and white, win and lose or good and bad, it’s about ‘what am I learning here?’ If they’ve got that reference point they’ve got the skills moving forward to deal with it and reframe it and change their perspective on it.”

“The one thing that coaches ask is ‘did you compete?’” says Robertson. “‘Did you compete to the best of your ability? Yes and you lost. OK, you can swallow that, be proud of your efforts. Sometimes you just get beaten by a better player but you’ve got to learn from that. And if you didn’t compete to the best of your ability then why not?’ Then it’s backtracking to ‘I didn’t sleep well’, ‘I had doughnuts for breakfast’, whatever it may be. The conversation is purely around competing. You don’t want to be too content or comfortable with losing but you want to ask ‘did I compete to the best of my ability?’ Why or why not? That’s the conversation that coaches have with them and that’s where the skills come in because if we said to them go and do it all yourself and they’re overawed and they get smashed on court and off court and they say ‘I hate tennis, I’m out’.”

Both Robertson and Kriz state that this can be a challenge because tennis is ranked – a fact not lost on players, coaches or their parents. “We’re trying to change that narrative and make them feel comfortable that it’s about development,” says Robertson. As long as they’ve done the best they can it’s about learning for the next tour and then the next tour and then the next tour. And then it’s the same with the parents because the kids get off the court and they feel accountable and want to ring mum and dad to explain the result. ‘I won or I lost’. We’re still on a learning curve with a lot of our parents that this is about development on and off the court, but we’re seeing growth. By the third week, they’re comfortable with who they are, they’re talking to other international players, they’re self-managing better, so there’s a bit more energy.

“Conversely, you’ll have a player who is up and another who is down, so you’ve now got to go back and tell them ‘we need to get you through the next little bit’ and bring in some self-management tools that we’ve practised. It’s just that reassurance because they have it in their head that they need to be the best player here and then they get all the sponsors, then they go to No 1, and then they start to forecast and some of the parents do too.”

Match videos are also sent to the players’ parents and private coaches, who are mostly back in Australia, within 24 to 36 hours. It is a relatively new practice but it feeds into Tennis Australia’s aims. Kriz says: “They can work through it with their private coach and have a better conversation about what’s going on as well, not just judging it on a win-loss. So we are saying to the parents before you have a conversation with the kids or the coaches, before the private coach is having a conversation with the kid, watch the video and then let’s go through it as opposed to judging straight away on wins and losses.”

Developing life skills

Tennis Australia’s Life Skills Program, which is being mapped to adolescent development and designed alongside the Australian educational framework, combines online theory and activities with practical application in a way that is both fun and interactive.

Kriz cites an example of an online exercise. She says: “We’ve taken a screen shot of a departure board at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris and one of the questions will be: ‘if your flight to Stockholm is LU378, tell me what terminal you need to be at, what time you’re departing and what time your gate is’. We’ve then put some quizzes in the back end of that. Then once we actually go to Charles de Gaulle, we’ll go to the departure board and say: ‘OK, you guys learned how to do this this week, now I want you to put it into practice. Find it for us.’”

She returns to the theme of engagement and buy-in from players for life skills. Coaches and parents are starting to view them as a priority too. “Once you have buy-in then the engagement piece becomes better. Once the kids go ‘I need to do it and I want to do it’ it’s then asking where in the schedule on a daily basis we can do it. Once you have that there’s a huge appetite from the kids because they feel better equipped and more confident about travelling and there’s a certain amount of pride they take.” On another occasion, the players were taken to a railway station and shown how to buy tickets under supervision. The group later returned to that station to check their learning. “The next time, they were very excited to know they could do it. They were the ones going ‘we’ll buy the tickets too because we know how to do it’. That’s what you want. That’s the win. Once you have those little wins it becomes easier. It might be that you say ‘that took half an hour, we missed three trains, we watched three trains go by that we could have been on’ but then the next time it’s all worthwhile once you see them really excited about it. You know if that’s in two years’ time with their family or five or ten years’ time with their partner then they’re going to be able to do it.”

All of these skills are built incrementally and developed in line with their individual assessment and tour needs. “Each week we build upon what we’re asking of them in independence. Whether it’s ‘OK kids, this week we’re going to show you how to do the laundry. Next week you’re going to find the laundry, Google it, and you’re going to show us how to do it’. We do the same thing with restaurants or meals. Then, ‘we’re going to show you how to book courts, talk to the tournament director, introduce yourself, book transport, buy balls and fill up your water – you guys are going to do that.’ Once they feel comfortable and we’re confident they can deal with it, then we continually load them up. So by the third week we’ll have them calling up and booking the courts, as opposed to us doing it for them. When they’re confident and capable of managing it, a lot of confidence comes from knowing you can do it.”

Tennis Australia’s holistic approach requires a new definition of ‘success’, because it cannot be measured solely in professional tennis careers, trophies or prize money. “If the kid has a great professional career, whatever that may be; if they are retired at 22 because of a severe injury or they didn’t quite make it and they come back in, they go to college, and they come back in as a lawyer at TA or in the media team – that’s success to us,” says Kriz. “We have a responsibility there and success can’t just be performance, we have to move beyond what success means in our sport. Because it doesn’t matter if you’re No 1 in the world – your career will stop at some point. When they are in our care we need to provide them and assist them with those developmental skills to move beyond sport.”

Robertson refers to former player Ash Barty in making his point. “She was the No 1 player in the world, won three grand slams, and left the sport at 25. That’s a success because she’s achieved what she wants and she’s left the game on her own terms and in a really good place – but that’s just one athlete. How do all players get to leave on their own terms and ready for the next chapters of life?”

In partnership with

By Sarah Evans

The focus of our third Leaders Meet of 2022 was around the dynamics of performance pathways and how to effectively manage the transitions of the athletes throughout. We also highlight the need to ensure psychological safety, particularly the notion of learner safety within your teams and staff throughout the pathway.

Session 1: Performance Pathways Part 1: Creating Effective Transitions

Speakers:

John Alder, Head of Player Development, Welsh Rugby Union

Helen Reesby, Head of National Performance Pathway, Lawn Tennis Association

Transition experiences:

• When have you managed transitions well? When the transition is anticipated, you can prepare and make plans. When you can engage in mentoring, learn from others, and have great support. You have time to understand what you need based on your values, and understand what is right for you.
• When have you not managed a transition well? Dealing with something with that it out of your control, such as a career-ending injury.
• Biggest lesson learnt was the importance of speaking about it. We need to be able to sit, and address the issue. This might not be what you want to do, but it is essential. From an external point of view it might seem as though you have transitioned well, due to looking to what’s next and making plans. However, it is essential to not presume anything. It’s very easy to assume someone is OK based on their exterior, but you won’t truly know until you ask.
• Importance to reflect on both positive and negative and not to stray away from either, as we can take huge value out of both.
• Recognise the ending of one chapter and embracing the start of something new. And the importance of understanding our identity and how that impacts our transitions.
• The role of your support system in helping you cope with transitions. Very important to have key people to support you in processing the emotions around the transitions in order to help manage the phase effectively.

Effective transitions:

• What is a transition? Moving from junior to senior, injuries, changing position, location change, essentially an experience which stretches and requires change. The process of exiting something and entering something new or different and making this, hopefully, as seamless as possible.
• Who is going through the transition, what resources do they have, how does it fit into their learning and where are they heading? What skills are required going into it?
• Having the readiness and ability to meet the demands of the next stage.
• Two elements to a transition: performance-ready. What are the demands of that next stage, do you have the tools to be able to step up? Person-ready: have you got the personal skills, are you ready for the lifestyle change? Are you personally ready? You often see one or the other.
• We prepare them well for the anticipated change especially making them performance-ready. But often what we don’t spend enough time on is preparing them for the unanticipated transitions which inevitably will happen, and these are often the person-ready skills.
• ‘Prepare the child for the path and not the path for the child’.
• Have the athletes got the resources to deal with the new challenges or changing environment?
• Smooth transitions or not? Recognising which transitions might be used as good bumps in the road to aid in their development.
• Team sports: experience transitions together but it might feel different for each person. The importance of understanding how things impact individuals differently and the challenge of the coach to recognise what is best for each player and how they are experiencing that change (identity, curriculum, direction of travel).
• In individual sport, how do you scale? Helen believes in a person-first approach with tennis being a highly individualised sport. There is a scale of transitions – they range from large transitions to small fry. The individualised approach is so important in terms of presuming and assuming.
• Gender-specific in tennis – understanding differences in genders. Still person-first as you can’t just group the genders but what are the general differences to be aware of?
• Parent involvement – in tennis they have to be heavily involved (time and resource). It’s easy to get frustrated by this, but they have a major influence on the transition and the support of the athletes, if you can engage with them and take them on the journey with you, they can be incredibly valuable.
• Social cultural context and how that mediates transitions – what are the dynamics at play in the environment that can impact a transition? In many squad-based teams and sports, you can have 50 people including staff and athletes.
• The importance of role clarity on the field and off the field.

Session 2: Performance Pathways Part 2: The Different Stages of Psychological Safety

Speaker:

Tim Cox, Managing Director, Management Futures

Psychological safety:

• “Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes” – Dr Amy C. Edmondson.

Why it matters:

• You want people to be able to think clearly, to make connections, share insights, bring ideas and learn.
• As a leader you want to simultaneously increase intellectual friction and decrease social friction.
• Google Project Aristotle: the number one determinant of team success was psychological safety.
• Wellbeing.

Social pain & the brain:

• Whilst social pain and physical pain can have similar characteristics, they are not the same experience.
• They share some of the same underlying neural substrates.
• The common experiential element is the affective component of pain – the distressing experience associated with these threats motivates individuals to terminate, or escape the negative stimulus.

Four stages of psychological safety:

• Inclusion safety: I feel valued and a sense of belonging. Safe to be myself. This is a pre-condition for the other three.
• Learner safety: I feel safe to ask questions, seek guidance ask for help, admit mistakes, and be vulnerable.
• Contributor safety: I feel safe to share my ideas, and trusted to act on my initiative.
• Challenger safety: I feel safe to challenge the status quo.

Inclusion safety – key concepts:

• What it should take to be included – two things:
• Be Human
• Be Harmless
• And yet…
• Sometimes we extend partial or conditional inclusion safety. Sometimes we revoke or withhold it.
• ‘We like to tell ourselves soothing stories to justify our sense of superiority’.

Learner safety – key concepts:

• The moral imperative to grant learner safety is to act first by encouraging and inviting the learner to learn.
• Failure isn’t the exception, it’s the expectation and the way forward.
• The most important signal in granting or withholding learner safety is the leader’s emotional response to dissent and bad news. How are your reacting, because the learner is watching us?
• The prejudiced mind is wilfully blind. Do you genuinely believe they can?
• When the environment punishes rather than teaches, whether through neglect, manipulation of coercion people become defensive, less able to self-diagnose, self-coach and self-correct. That opens people up to the risk of real failure – the failure to keep trying.

Contributor safety – key concepts:

• A toxic environment shuts down performance because people worry about psychological safety before performance.
• Speaking first when you hold positional power softly censors your team.
• Inviting people to think beyond one’s role expresses greater respect and grants greater permission to contribute.
• It’s the leader’s role to recognise the difference between dissenting and derailing behaviour and manage the boundary between the two.

Challenger safety – key concepts:

• Challenger safety democratises innovation.
• The more unknowns the leader eliminates through transparency the fewer the sources of stress for the individual.
• Nothing shuts curiosity and exploration down faster than a small dose of ridicule administered at just the right time.
• Deprive your team of challenger safety and you dedicate the team to the status quo.
• Assigning permission for dissent from the outset takes away the natural fear associated with challenging status quo.

Six ways we can increase psychological safety:

• Build trust and belonging.
• Put it on the table – discuss it.
• Model openness and honesty.
• Make it easy to speak up.
• Praise it.
• Constructively challenge fixed positions.

Model openness & honesty

• We forget how scary we are. Our power silences people.
• We don’t question our list of whose opinion counts.
• We send ‘shut up’ versus ‘speak up’ signals.
• Watch your language.

Make it easy to speak up

• Ask open questions to seek input, but make them specific e.g. What do people think we should be paying more attention to?
• Red teaming / Brains trust meetings.
• Use small groups or 1:1 conversations.

Session 3: Performance Pathways Part 3: An Insight into the FA’s Approach

Speaker:

Phil Church, Senior Coach Development Lead, The Football Association

• Individualisation: we’ve certainly moved into a landscape where individualisation is key in relation to developing coaches and players. We have what we call a talent map, where we can look at who might have potential. We have boots on the ground, they’re ‘in the trenches’, provide unconditional support and they are not just there when they’re winning. This provides a good idea of the landscape and therefore how we can influence it.
• Create a personalised and connected experience: we know the power to individualised approaches, but to elevate this to the next level, how are you connecting this to the experience players or coaches face? Individual relationships are a key component of this (who, self, how, what).
• The FA’s approach to development: the general rule of thumb for the organisation’s development approach is 70:20:10. As people involved in developing talented coaches or players, you’d expect to see our work somewhere in and around the 20 or 10 section. This is why context and experiences outside of this around important to consider.
• If we are only with them for 10-20% of their time, how can you influence and add value for them in that short space of time? You get trust in consistency and competence. How are you adding value to a player or a coach? ‘Bring a gift’ to add value to them.
• Environmental context: spend time getting a better understanding of the context of the team around the individual. An individualised approach is powerful for development, but the external environment for the individual has potential for large influence.

Attendee takeaways:

• Inclusion requires understanding of team values – learning, challenging, contributing.
• Best practice for psychological safety – new people coming in to be clear of expectations and culture, and to talk about intent around psychological safety within the induction.
• The need to formalise your transition process.
• Think about the best way to train or support psychological safety.
• The need to share the four stages of psychological safety and the six descriptions with the team.
• To have the agreed ways of working threaded through a club or organisation strategy.
• Have best practice embedded into everyday work and life.
• Reflecting on effective transitions.
• It is important to understand where failure fits into psychological safety – should we support failure at the top end of elite level performance?
• As a coach or leader, understand your own transition journey to empathise and support the athletes.
• Identifying your team’s roles and responsibilities to help build the six ways to increase psychological safety – use your super strengths well.
• Psychological safety to give awareness to development pathways.
• A way of changing best practice – at national senior team selection meetings, instead of the chair / senior selector listing their team selection and then asking the room to share theirs and justify the differences, build psychological safety in the room by ‘putting it on the table – discuss it’. All of the selection committee put their teams up simultaneously and then open the discussion.

By Sarah Evans

• Wellbeing and resilience sit front and centre

• Communicate with care

• Plan, do, review

1. Be sure to understand and value the individual

There is a growing awareness across all sports that wellbeing and resilience play a key role in the achievement and sustainment of success. Dan Lewindon, Head of Performance Science and Medicine at the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA], explained in our Virtual Leaders Meet in 2020, that in fact, wellbeing and resilience “sit front and centre in our discussions about our athletes and in our conversations with them.” It is critical to understand the individual as a whole, their abilities, their drivers, and take the time to understand their individual backgrounds and experiences that make them who they are. Lewindon also highlighted that individually tailoring the approach to each athlete is crucial and “our understanding of their context is key in building a relationship of trust and ultimately influence.”

2. Shape your environment and communication

There has been an explosion in specialism within sports science which has created the opportunity for dedicated expertise and diverse thinking in how you solve problems. However, Lewindon warned that this could lead to silo thinking and unnecessary noise. He explained how it is critical to filter these into a system that is clear and cohesive, with an integrated approach in a “structured and safe environment where stake holders and support staff can share their views and feel valued for doing so.” If this is done right it creates real clarity for the athlete, and reduces unnecessary noise and distraction. Lewindon also highlighted how imperative it is to communicate with care: “don’t use overly technical or medical language with the athletes, do what is best for them, not for you”. The trust that staff members create, the genuine connection they have with the athletes, and communication they use, can have a huge impact on the performance outcome.

3. Have a clear plan and processes

Lewindon stated how important it is to understand how to support the athlete, and how to shape the training environment and programme, in order to go after the priorities needed for performance. You must make it crystal clear to the athlete how everything aligns, be that testing, monitoring or training techniques. “It is important the athletes and coaches understand the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ this is going to impact their performance,” said Lewindon. This understanding then provides the confidence and clarity needed in order to push forwards. “The individual development plans that are successful are those which are genuinely owned by the athlete” he added. The athletes are part of the conversation, process and it is written in their language. Finally, the review process is critical, it is not something that you just make once and then never look at again. “Plan, do, review, regularly,” said Lewindon. It takes real time and effort to do, but it is crucial to take time to both look back and to plan ahead.

By John Portch

Larry Lauer, a Mental Skills Specialist with the United States Tennis Association [USTA], has seen where things have gone wrong in the past.

“Maybe too much mental training in the past has been ‘here’s a few ideas – throw them up against the wall and see what sticks’,” he told the Leaders Performance Podcast in early May.

Off the back of that conversation, where Lauer delved into his work building mental skills and resilience in young players, the Leaders Performance Institute asked him to reflect on his professional development.

What is your biggest strength?

I’d like to say – and I might be wrong, you’ll have to ask people that know me – my ability to learn and adapt. I’m not the smartest person, I don’t have the highest IQ, I don’t have the highest scores on tests, but I think I find a way. Maybe that’s a big part of why I spend so much time on this topic of resilience because I know that tennis is about finding a way. It’s messy, you don’t always get it right, you make mistakes – I’ve made a lot of mistakes – but I think my ability to get back up and find a way to learn and get better has probably been my greatest strength, especially as I wasn’t a professional athlete. I’m not coming into this saying ‘I played ATP and I played in grand slams’ – I don’t have that. So I have to find other ways to connect with these performers, adapt, and be useful to them.

What strength do you admire in others?

The thought that comes up immediately is humility. Someone who is extremely successful and great at what they do and yet humble – that to me is just awesome. They listen to others, they’re interested in others, they empathise as well. I see great coaches doing that, great sports psychologists; you know that this person is great at what they do, but they don’t really talk about themselves. They talk about the team, they talk about what the other person is doing to make them successful versus ‘well I did this, I did that’; and I always try to check myself on that because I think that, in this world, if it becomes so much about you then you’re going to lose it with the players and the coaches because it really isn’t about us.

What is the key to strong teamwork?

Communication. Communication with a shared vision and an understanding of how to reach that vision. The tension points, the challenges, getting through them. We just had one yesterday and we disagreed within the team on whether or not a player should play a tournament – and we worked it out – we decided the approach and we’re all aligned on how we’re going to move forward. To me, that’s teamwork, because you’re not always going to agree and you have to be able to work together towards the common goal and that requires a lot of communication. My friend Ed Ryan who heads up our athletic training and medicine always says ‘communication is the solution and also the root of all problems’. It’s a great way of thinking about it.

How will you look to get stronger in your role?

By surrounding myself with really good people who ask good questions and demand more of me is important. Fortunately, I work with mental coaches who do that on a regular basis, which has been amazing for me as well as other good friends outside of the USTA. And then the coaching staff. I find that when I’m talking to them I’m trying to understand from their eyes and their perspective: how is this making my player better? What are you giving me that’s going to make a difference? Sometimes me getting frustrated with myself because I don’t know how to communicate that or I can’t clearly see the plans. Then I need to go back, reflect on that, and get back to work and say ‘here’s the steps, here’s what we’ve got to do’. So I think it’s being around really good people and having those conversations and then as you branch out, it’s why I’ve really enjoyed Leaders, you can meet really good people and have these types of conversations that I’m not even thinking about; it wasn’t top of mind at that point. Different ideas, different perspectives. To me, looking for different ways to learn. Reading: I try to read something every morning, attending sessions like Leaders’ and other organisation’s, and then being surrounded by really good people. And then not being afraid to take a chance. Trying to find different ways. ‘Maybe this is a little way outside the box but let’s see if it can work, and if it doesn’t, we’ll sit inside the parking lot and maybe come up with a better way of doing it or we’ll leave it alone’. But we have to continue to find ways to get better or we get behind.

To hear more from Larry Lauer, listen below:

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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Larry Lauer, a Mental Skills Specialist with the United States Tennis Association [USTA], has seen where things have gone wrong in the past.

“Maybe too much mental training in the past has been ‘here’s a few ideas – throw them up against the wall and see what sticks’,” he tells the Leaders Performance Podcast.

Larry has come on to discuss how the USTA has embedded mental skills training in its coaching programs and delve into:

• How mental skills feeds into the technical and tactical elements of tennis [9:00];
• The importance of social learning between juniors and older players [20:40];
• Bringing mental skills to life and tracking progress [24:00];
• How the role of the mental skills coach will evolve [34:30].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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On International Women’s Day, we reflect on the pivotal roles played by women across high performance sport.

By John Portch

From the front offices to the locker rooms via the psychologist’s couch, we bring you ten performance lessons from the Leaders Performance Institute vaults that continue to resonate today.

1. Athletes need to feel a sense of belonging

The WNBA is renowned for its advocacy of social justice issues and one of the its leading lights, the Seattle Storm, have been at the vanguard under CEO and President Alisha Valavanis. Backed by one of sports few all-female leadership groups in Force 10 Hoops LLC, the Storm has won three championships and made every effort to ensure the players find an inclusive, cohesive locker room where everyone is committed to representing the Storm’s vest.

“It starts with establishing personal relationships and building relationships on trust and connection so that players can share with us what their hopes are off the court,” said Valavanis, speaking to the Leaders Performance Institute in 2020. “There’s a real intentional effort to learn all about all of the individuals in our organisation and we certainly have conversations with players on how we can support them and make sure that everyone is clear what it means to be part of this organisation.”

2. Engage your athletes in their development

When athletes feel secure then you can empower them in both their personal development and the collective. “I’m a big believer in getting players to collaborate, present back, research, share with the group, present to the coaching group and vice versa,” said Jess Thirlby, the Head Coach of the England netball team on the Leaders Performance Podcast in 2020. “It’s a good way for me to check understanding from the group and it helps inform how to set direction and invest my energy when I hear the playing group back and they’ve demonstrated really sound understanding of themselves and the opposition and, not only that, but coming up with ways in which we’re going to pit strengths against their weaknesses.”

3. Make space in your schedule for independent development

Thirlby’s emphasis on empowerment is matched by Lucy Skilbeck, the Director of Actor Training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art [RADA]. “One of the things we’re looking at is how we can develop a more facilitative relationship with the student and how we make more space within the timetable for the student’s independent development,” she told a Leaders Performance Institute Webinar in 2021. “We’re also looking at how can we foster in them a greater sense of independence and understanding of themselves as artists and actors; as people who can make and create work as well as deliver other people’s work. Pedagogically, how do we work with them to facilitate the growth of their individuality rather than a monocultural process?”

4. Take a step back

Paula Dunn is the Head Coach of the Paralympic Programme at British Athletics. Ahead of the delayed Tokyo Games, where her team claimed 24 medals, she spoke of the perils of micromanaging. “I thought I had to be in charge, I had to be tough, I had to work the longest hours, I had to have all the answers,” she said. “It’s never good to have a decision made by one person, so I’ve tried to work with my team, understanding what their motivations are, and just being honest when I just don’t know something or if I’ve had issues.”

5. Is the athlete’s real competition the challenge of fulfilling their potential?

Anne Keothavong, the Captain of the Great Britain Fed Cup tennis team, is engaged in the development of the nation’s players and knows that no corners can be cut. As she told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2018, the challenges can differ from player to player. She said: “Every player represents a different case, depending on where they’re ranked and how old they are, how long they’ve been playing professionally, and what targets they need to hit. I’m not involved on a day to day basis but when I see them in a training or competition environment I’m looking out for whether they’re improving, consistently working on those goals, and the other things they want to focus on to help make them a better tennis player.”

6. Track athletic development through relevant tests

The best data can be linked to specific tests and Kate Weiss, the Director of Sports Science at the Seattle Mariners, walked viewers through a hypothetical process with a pitcher at our February Webinar. “When they come in, we’re going to test range of motion, we’re going to test movement capacity; how are they going to move in a general sense and a baseball-specific sense,” she says. “We’re going to look at the different components of strength, speed, power, we’re going to look at body composition. All these different things that we know contribute to and help support what they do on the field. Then what we’re going to do is look at the on-field data and link that back and go ‘OK, maybe there’s issues with their shoulder separation on the mound.’ We’re going to look through everything and go ‘OK, is it coming from a range of motion issue? Is it coming from just a movement capacity issue?’ Or if it’s not those things maybe it’s just a coaching issue that we have to work on and come up with specific drills.”

7. Data: spend less time capturing data and more time analysing and feeding back

“For data capture and analysis, we have a mantra at the EIS: ‘we should spend less time capturing data and more time analysing and feeding back’,” said Julia Wells, the Head of Performance Analysis at the English Institute of Sport. “That’s something that’s been rooted in us since the inception of our Performance Analysis team.” She and her team supported Great Britain’s athletes at the 2020 Tokyo Games and, as she told the Leaders Performance Institute in the aftermath, they prioritise harnessing the latest tech and relationships with the end users. “The software available now is immense,” she added. “There’s so much to choose from, which can be a challenge but we honed in on data visualisation and our ability to translate data into usable insights.”

8. Do not attempt to separate emotion from performance

Sports Psychologist Mia Stellberg feels attempting to shut down emotions is counterproductive for athletes. “The more they can understand emotions, they can explain and understand what they are feeling or how that feeling came to occur is the first step,” she told the Leaders Performance Podcast in 2021. “We can never control anything that we are not aware of. So you need to be aware of your emotions, sometimes this is the most tricky part of my work, to talk about emotions to young guys at age 20 who just want to rule the world, play and win the title! Then the second step is understanding how that feeling occurs or what needs to happen before it pops up, so if we want to prevent negative feelings we have to understand what happens before it comes so that we can learn how to control, how to prevent.”

9. Embrace risk, expand comfort zones

Mental performance coach Véronique Richard, who has worked with Cirque du Soleil as well as a variety of sports organisations, attempts to cultivate ‘risk-friendly’ environments. “Risk needs to be part of your environment,” she told the Leaders Performance Institute in 2018. Richard strives to foster the conditions for enhanced skill development in the athletes and performance artists with whom she works. In short, she introduces an element of chaos. “By working through that mess, people actually increase their repertoires of thoughts and actions, which contributes to creativity,” she said. “First, I ask the athlete: ‘what are you avoiding not because you’re not skilled enough but because it makes you uncomfortable?’ There’s all sorts of things we don’t do because of discomfort; it can be technical, tactical psychological, emotional, personal, ego and then, as a leader, your role is to find the right stimuli to bring the person to explore discomfort and bring people to work in this zone of discomfort; and if you manage that successfully you actually expand their zone of comfort.”

10. Do your athletes know where to turn for help?

In 2019, the Australian Institute of Sport established its Career & Education Practitioner referral network, as Matti Clements, the acting CEO, explained in her former role as Deputy Director of Athlete Wellbeing and Engagement. “That is practitioners who can provide high level expertise on vocational pathways. It’s referral-in and we’ll cover the costs of all podium-plus-level athletes and coaches,” she told an audience at Leaders Meet: Wellbeing. The AIS also provides help for the athlete wellbeing & engagement managers with the provision of a personal development programme. “This is so that we can ensure a level of risk management and skillset across those people. What we’ve done is invite the whole system, including professional sports, into that education and we’re creating community practice hubs so that they can actually have some peer support; it’s led by us, but there’s peer support there.”

Louis Cayer is one of the most experienced and decorated high performance coaches and coach educators in international men’s doubles tennis.

For the latest edition of the Leaders Performance Podcast, Cayer joined Leaders Performance Institute Editor John Portch to discuss his work with the Lawn Tennis Association [LTA].

Also on the conversational agenda are:

• Why tennis coaching differs from most other sports [2:30];
• The evolution of the LTA’s coaching strategy [7:00];
• Why feedback has replaced the LTA’s culture of correction [15:00];
• Checking that processes and culture are still on track [25:10].

John Portch: Twitter | LinkedIn

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