8 Nov 2023
ArticlesThe Leaders Performance Institute’s Women’s High Performance Sport Community Group recently discussed how all sports and organisations can emulate their market leaders.
Judging by the responses during the October group calls of our Women’s High Performance Sport Community Group, the answers are manifold.
Nevertheless, the experiences of the female coaches and practitioners on the calls can be clustered into three main themes: structures and teams, data, and education.
Here, we delve into each in turn as discussed by the female coaches and practitioners from leagues, teams and organisations across the world who joined the October calls.
Structures and teams
We are at a point in time where not only are new roles are being created, but new teams and departments are being introduced too.
We’ve learnt that asking someone to add ‘the women’s side’ to their role isn’t fruitful. We also know that women’s sport demands its own coordination of research and management of research questions. This means that consideration is needed in planning out the departments, positions, and staff needed. In turn, further thoughts go towards SWOTs, goals and objectives, what type of people are needed, which processes are needed. We want to help these teams set up to operate for success.
Teams typically haven’t had many staff in place, especially not full-time staff, but now we’re able to add more people, we need to make sure people fit within our processes and visions. It should be a given that those being hired for women’s sports are receptive to wanting to understand and adapt their work to best suit women.
For Dr Sue Robson, the Healthy Women in High Performance Sport Programme Lead at High Performance Sport New Zealand (HPSNZ), it’s been important that her new role fits around what exists already, and that when putting a programme together, we know the context and culture first. It takes time but find out why, and how, what exists already does, and its current value to the group. Understand your situation before making changes.
Those on the calls also heard about different bedrocks to strategies and what’s needed to make a programme work. For Robson, it’s Environment, which impacts Knowledge, which impacts Evaluation. The process can’t just be a tick-box exercise. It needs to understand reality and equip people for useful conversations. In evaluating, it is important to establish baselines and track progress so that efforts are in the right places.
For Angel City FC of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), it’s been understanding the head coach’s playing style and training philosophy, alongside the GM’s vision for the club. This includes deciding how performance is to be measured, and what’s needed as a foundation to this.
Additionally, we haven’t been able to escape the need for education as a part of strategies. More on that below.
It’s a widely shared view that there is a lot of tasks anyone could be doing at any one time. Thus prioritisation and structuring a strategy requires an outlook across multiple timelines. HPSNZ are looking to three time lines. The immediate, and minimal viable product: how can they take what they’re doing now and make it better quickly? The short to mid-term, six to 12 months: which big topics would make a significant shift if changes are made? Long-term, 12 months and more: if we know more about this topic we could make a confident change. HPSNZ are exploring how to measure coach knowledge on female health as well as how to better understand tracking menstrual cycles so that they can build a self-learning environment for athletes.
The group also discussed how leagues, federations, governing bodies, institutes of sport, and clubs can collaborate better, with education, knowledge sharing, or support on adding value for athletes in differing environments at different stages of performance cycles. This is even more critical when new clubs and franchises are being created, and when resources are being increased for new roles, departments and teams. Particular examples shared and encountered recently are, the NWSL’s Medical Manual and UK Sport’s Pregnancy Guide, there was agreement that more could be done.
Data
Which information is collected when, and how often, are important questions that shape data collection procedures within a strategy.
In some environments, some current practices mean that athletes could go as long as two to four years before having an opportunity to flag a concern. The onboarding period is an important time, it will shape expectations and is a good chance to show care and precedence, as player profiles and individualised plans are built out. It’s also a time where you can signal that there are topics of importance beyond the menstrual cycle.
There’s also consideration to be given to how to time testing and research to fit with the competitive schedule, and to ensure compliance from the athletes, so that there is buy in from the majority, which will assist with the data making an impact. The basics need to be right if what we do know is to have a positive effect on the future.
Positioning data as a support for players, rather than a stick is important. Moreover, those in non-medical and science roles can be key to shaping a culture of compliance. Deciding as a collective which questions are important for impacting performance over time is also critical.
One extra hurdle for performance teams is around the application of research in elite environments. Current research isn’t always aimed at an elite or professional level; there then becomes a need to test in these environments before confirming an approach. This leaves a desire for applied and academic worlds to meet and collaborate further.
When it comes to informing strategies, a varied way of collecting data through conversations as well as surveys to let people share their lived experiences more naturally has proven successful. In general practice, conversations and trusting relationships help athletes bring up what’s important to them beyond the obvious topics for women. For example, urinary incontinence is the type of medical issue that can go under-reported.
Education
Education has emerged in conversations as another universal must-have for any strategy. It will shape the culture, and equip athletes to give better information, and enable athletes and staff to have better conversations. Nothing important is easy, as they say. There are questions around how best to deliver education and on what cadence so that it is effective and engaged with; enabling people to ask further questions and instigate continual education.
There is acknowledgement that education at a younger age will support athletes when they enter elite and professional environments, and that using parents can be an effective tactic. There’s also awareness that elite and professional organisations can support community education, perhaps in a way that traditional educational settings haven’t been able to. And ultimately, how do we measure education?
If you’re working with athletes who share spaces across genders, it’s important to give additional thought to the physical environment. Images should reflect the athletes, and not just be of men – representation matters. These little details can let girls and women know they’re front of mind too.
Who is your strategy for? Beyond education will it support staff as well as athletes? Ultimately, no one should suffer in silence. We want environments where athletes and staff feel equipped and safe to have useful conversations around their health, so that concerns can be raised and then acted upon.
Whilst there’s lots to be worked through, the overall sense we got from the conversations was excitement for the number of resources and the money being invested in high performance departments to support players, that will help the teams be more sustainable, and prevent turnover of staff. In turn, this will support people to build a culture and vision, and have people join departments knowing what to expect and how they can add value. There is a belief that people will be able to complete research over longer periods of time. There will be people in place to get clean data, decide on interventions, and to ultimately be able to be strategic with their high performance departments.
Finally, there will be a growing belief that this will be possible for an increasingly wide number of women’s teams and sports, following in the footsteps of some of the more mature sports and organisations.
Leaders Performance Institute members reflect upon key challenges in their fields, future considerations and what might these may mean for coaches and practitioners in their day-to-day work?
Heath’s central argument is that we should be striving to intervene ‘upstream’ rather than ‘downstream’. ‘Downstream’ actions react to problems once they’ve occurred and ‘upstream’ efforts aim to prevent those problems from happening. The premise of Heath’s work fed into our conversations in taking stock of the themes that are occupying downstream thinking, as well as supporting upstream thinking in how themes within high performance sport might evolve and how we best prepare for them.
There were three questions we explored as part of the group conversations:
Where are we?
With a variety of disciplines and sports on the call, it was interesting to first of all explore what topics, themes or challenge are currently forefront of mind for those that were on the call. There were a number of commonalities despite the differences in sport and discipline.
Influence of technology
It wasn’t a huge surprise to see that a topic and challenge on people’s minds at the moment is the influence of technology on different elements of the programme. A theme outlined in the groups was around how to best integrate innovation, notably data and analytics. The key question aligned to this was around how and what to push forward, to decide which has the best opportunity to influence the organisation as a whole. The influence of technology also came to the fore around someone leading player development programmes, specifically around implementing new tracking technology as part of their player development strategy to balance old-school habits and modern thinking. Finally, the elephant in the room – the influence of artificial intelligence. What should remain ‘human’ and what can be ‘machine’ was a question occupying thoughts from those on the call.
The performance environment
There were a lot of responses from within the group that fell into the bucket of the performance environment. A sub-theme centred around team dynamics and, in particular the challenge of creating a unified language and beliefs throughout the performance team. As an extension to this, another focus shared was the driving of standards and ways of working within the team. Interdisciplinary working was highlighted as both a challenge and area of focus by one of the environments on the call. Another complexity and consideration that aligned to this section was the ongoing need to navigate a landscape where athletes have a growing agency over the design of their performance setup and how performance support staff work around this evolution. Finally, health and wellbeing as a priority for both athletes and staff was something forefront of mind for participants on the call.
Staff development
To wrap up this first section, staff development was another overarching theme forefront of people’s minds. There are ongoing considerations around upward mobility, the organisation and planning of staff development and how we best balance innovation with evidence-based practice. There was also a nod to the importance of accountability around staff development and it actually having an impact back into the programme.
What’s next?
After we took time to reflect, it was time to project forward around what topics and themes we think we could be encountering and thinking about in two to three years’ time. This question yielded some really interesting perspectives – this could be an excellent list of considerations for upstream thinking and for high performance staff to engage in conversations around when back in their environments.
Doing more with less: with the cost of living continuing to rise, budgets are becoming tighter across organisations. How can we continue to innovate and continue to move forward in a resourceful way? Similarly, do perceived innovative practices actually make us better and do we need to be more cognisant of this when there is more pressure to be efficient with resources?
Workload management: relevant to both athletes and staff as the pressure and amount of competition continues to increase across all sport. We are seeing evolutions in technology, rule changes and yearly calendars for competitions which is something we need to more and more aware of.
Player empowerment: considerations around how athlete will use and control their data and information that is tracked. How can organisations be creative and separate themselves?
Interrupted competition: with some of the challenges being faced around the world, how might this impact the competitions we engage in? How will we work to build more agile sporting systems and support athletes to deal with these challenges?
Protecting the ecosystem: aligned nicely to some of the contemporary topics and challenges we are facing, how do we find the balance between the human system within our analysis and protect the ecosystem we are creating? There is a general feeling that we must not let the ‘machine’ completely take over the human system, as it has the potential to drastically alter our performance frameworks.
Change fatigue: the consideration of wellbeing in a constantly disrupted context that is high performance sport, especially where we are witnessing increasing amounts of change which impacts the physical and mental wellbeing of our people.
Creating opportunities: as educational standards are changing, how are we creating opportunities for younger professionals to enter and develop within the industry?
Artificial intelligence: even though many sporting environments are beginning to trial and embrace artificial intelligence, its influence is likely to remain a popular topic of conversations further down the line as we become better educated around the impact it can have on what we do. What might it mean for you and your team?
Preparing for what’s next
Now we have outlined eight future considerations, we shifted the conversation to how we can best prepare for these upstream trends. The idea of this question was to share best practices leveraged in the environments on the call that may positively impact how we prepare and project for future topics.
Be proactive rather than reactive
It sounds like a simple best practice but how intentional are we in being proactive to anticipating and committing to thinking upstream and engaging in how we are going to handle the ‘oh shit moments’? One attendee on the call shared how the team seek to have quarterly ‘what’s ahead’ meetings to create an intentional space to think in the longer-term. Do you have a person or a small team who are focused on trends and studying what’s happening in the sports world? Having people accountable and feeding information back into the organisation is important for the development of the ‘upstream culture’. It’s important to also not fall into the trap of just following trends – add context to your own world or environment even if some of the trends you are coming across are from the same sport.
Get out of your own bubble
We reflected on the importance of engaging in group conversations with people from different disciplines and sports to gain fresh perspectives on what they are seeing in their contexts. A member of the group shared how much buy-in and energy is created when there is mention of learning from different organisations in the industry, especially when there are commonalities and affirmation in terms of thinking. Finally, another simple but, if done well, powerful best practice: be aware of as much as possible – listen, make notes of patterns and spend time across as many people as possible so you are collating a diversity of perspectives and insights.
Collaborate
There was a general agreement that there is a need for increased collaboration – the world is getting smaller, therefore building collaborative partnerships that save time, aggregate resources and accelerate learning are of vital importance. Secondly, how are we helping our people thrive and feel empowered to think further upstream? It starts with investing heavily in good people and trusting individuals to work with autonomy and lead others in smaller groups – this approach will allow organisations to navigate many issues with more agility than traditional fixed organisational structures. Finally, one of the future trends was around the power of the athlete – look to be much more collaborative with them and work with them and, where relevant, their support network as opposed to fighting against it.
Progress is being made at Manchester United and World Rugby – in traditionally male dominated sports – but there are not always opportunities for all in women’s sport.
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Polly Bancroft serves as the Head of Women’s Football at WSL [Women’s Super League] club Manchester United. She is discussing her 18 years working in the women’s game, which have taken in roles at the Football Association, Brighton & Hove Albion and Uefa.
Of her experience working for Uefa, the European football confederation, which is headquartered in Nyon, Switzerland, Bancroft adds: “I think having experienced living in Switzerland and working across Europe with many different cultures, I think understanding different approaches to time, decision making, and hierarchy were just integral to my career.
“And I think learning to work with people from different backgrounds around sometimes very challenging topics but maintaining those relationships has been really important to me.”
Bancroft was speaking at a recent Keiser Webinar entitled Leading Women: Building Perception and Driving Opportunity. She was joined online by Nicky Ponsford, the Head of Women’s High Performance at World Rugby and, in front of a virtual audience drawn from coaches and practitioners from across the globe, the duo discussed the challenges of creating, scaling and sustaining a high performance infrastructure in women’s sport.
“I was lucky in my very first role that I had a line manager who always gave me the chance to learn and the chance to make mistakes. That’s something that I’ve tried to take with me throughout my journey,” Ponsford says of her time at the RFU [Rugby Football Union] where she served as Head of Performance for women – a role she filled for two decades as the game continued to grow exponentially.
“But I can’t do it all by myself. I need other people, need collaboration, need to work with others. [I learned] that politics are real in sport and that you have to learn how to work the politics.”
Bancroft and Ponsford, as leaders with female-focused leadership roles, are proof that steps are being taken in traditionally male-dominated sports, but neither is happy to rest on their laurels.
Here are six steps towards ensuring that progress is both scalable and sustainable.
During her time at the RFU, Ponsford oversaw the establishment of a women’s performance management group that was designed to have a “direct voice to the RFU management board.” It does not mean that the issues facing women’s rugby, from the transition to professionalism (ongoing since 2019) to the question of maternity leave, are instantly solved, but the right people are being asked the right questions. If you have men’s and women’s teams, it is important to grant both access to the necessary expertise or resource. “We’ve expanded our governance model in that we now have two different bodies overseeing women’s football at Manchester United,” says Bancroft. “We have a technical football board and a commercial working group as well. That falls under a women’s executive leadership team.” The intention is clear: “This new governance structure brings in members of the leadership team in legal, finance, communications, operations, football and marketing. We’ve got the key heads of football across the business that work on men’s, women’s, boys’ academy, girls’ academy and we’re using the very best expertise at the club and channelling it into the women’s game.”
What is the right pathway for the female version of your sport? Equity does not mean that women’s and men’s sport should be treated the same way. The challenges are often different and female sport must take its own path if the girls and women involved are to thrive with the right support. For example, English rugby removed promotion and relegation from Women’s Premiership Rugby during Ponsford’s tenure at the RFU. “[Previously] everyone had the chance to get to the top, but in terms of driving standards and driving a league that we wanted to get to, it wasn’t going to work,” she says. “Pushing that through, getting what we needed for the women’s game, was really important.”
“Nicky and I come from male-dominated sports,” says Bancroft. “Here at Manchester United, the club have operated men’s football for over 145 years and the women’s team has been reborn and we’re now into our sixth season. So my approach has been to blend that knowledge and experience of that 145-year history with collaboration and the bespoke nature of the demands and requirements of the women’s game. One part of that is through developing our own performance framework. With myself and the Head Coach, Marc Skinner, we’ve worked on this framework that is around learning and embracing the journey that learning gives you.” The framework is then split into “feelings and operations”. Bancroft continues: “From a feeling perspective, we want people to feel energised, we want them to feel included, and we want them to feel playful.” The idea is to promote creativity on and off the field. In terms of operations, the club wants to equip players to manage themselves and communicate effectively. There is also an emphasis on “finding solutions” and “seeking ownership”. “We want players to identify challenges and find solutions. Similarly, in the staffing environment, there might be a certain challenge or blocker that we’re coming up against. Let’s not sit back and complain about it. Let’s try and work out some solutions.”
What structures are in place in your environment to enable players, coaches and staff to take interpersonal risks? Ponsford argues that the creation of psychological safety goes hand in hand with developing a culture that encourages people to come forward with ideas. “While some may talk lots during meetings, there needs to be another mechanism for people to come forward, another time for people to share so that everybody has that opportunity,” she says. Ponsford has an open door policy so that “people can come forward with thoughts, people can come forward with ideas, and [know] that they get discussed, they get picked up, and they don’t get ignored.”
Manchester United use individual development plans for players and appraisals for staff to assist development, commit to goals and track progress. “We’re also really encouraging of staff and players to talk to their peers, talk to their friends about strengths and weaknesses. We also do different personality tests that can highlight certain blind spots, which I’ve found to be helpful personally,” says Bancroft. Some people at the club keep diaries, some meditate, and all players are encouraged to better understand their triggers and habits while also being accepting and kinder to themselves.
Bancroft explains that she and Manchester United have benefited from pioneering research into female athletes. She cites one report in particular, which was born from a collaboration between Dr Emma Ross of health and fitness consultancy the Well HQ and the WSL. It helped the club to shape their best practice. “We invited in some guest speakers, particularly around the menstrual cycle and the pelvic floor, we discussed kit options with our kit manufacturer, we’ve done some education with staff, we’ve done some education with players – I’ve learned some stuff about the menstrual cycle as well – it was a fascinating exercise to go through; that even as a woman I didn’t know everything there was yet about the cycle.” Such conversations need to be normalised.
Mark Jarram of Loughborough University explains that good leaders can benefit from a blend of empowerment and support.
One such area where systemisation – the development of frameworks, procedures and protocols – comes into its own is in performance planning. It can be particularly useful for coaches setting out their strategy and tactics, although as Jarram explains, some are more receptive them others at first.
He says: “It’s often a challenge for coaches because they have so much to do and look after. They’ve got the athletes at the forefront, they’ve got to manage and develop staff and then, all of a sudden, you’re introducing systemisation.”
Some head coaches systematise elements of their programme in the natural course of their work. Others haven’t given it much thought. “Sometimes systemisation is a consequence [of being athlete and staff-focused],” Jarram continues, “and other times it can be quite overwhelming because, as a head coach, you’ve got so much to do, you’ve got so much data, you’ve got so many conversations happening. Systemisation can be a consequence or a threat.”
In the second part of our interview, Jarram discusses his work helping coaches to better plan for performance.
‘It’s less about the plan and more about the planning itself’
As Head of Performance & Coaching Development, Jarram works closely with the tenured coaches on campus and Loughborough’s Head of Performance Support. “My role is to help facilitate the growth of coaches on campus,” he says. “I spend a huge amount of time and investment helping coaches be comfortable with performance planning. It’s educating them on what the actual process is and then helping upskill them in order to create it.
“We often say it’s less about the plan and more about the planning itself – taking people on a journey and providing clarity. This is because the plan is inevitably going to change based on your recruitment, injuries, what’s actually happening in competition. It’s very natural for that to change and it should.
“My role is to help coaches to understand how to lead a review and why your performance plan has to be a living, breathing thing. How do you regularly review what’s going on? How do you make performance planning part of your interdisciplinary team conversations so that if you’re off track you can quickly get back on? There’s different levels of comfort and effectiveness amongst the staff, which is why it comes back to the quality of the leadership.”
Winning today vs development tomorrow
One problem for coaches, as Jarram explains, is that they can be easily overwhelmed by the data coming their way from different members of staff. “They can be having too many conversations or there is too much input and we’re asking them to do too much,” he says. “In a coach-led environment, 20% of their job is coaching, 80% of their job is managing people and the environment; leading, behaviour management, recruitment.
“Most of their passion is in the 20%, not for all, but the majority. They do it because they like making a difference, they like having a lifetime impact. But, at the end of the day, they also do it because they enjoy competing and they enjoy winning. Sometimes that creates a lot of friction. You have an element of winning today versus development for tomorrow.”
Performance planning is mandatory for coaches at Loughborough and the accountability that brings has the potential to create some friction. “So we’re asking: ‘what do you want to achieve and how do you want to achieve it? And then we’re going to have a conversation about it’. There’s an element of ‘oh’. Sometimes they’re a bit fearful because they know we’re going to hold them accountable, but they’re doing the same thing with their athletes and members of staff. It’s not different, really. We’re back to people management, behaviour management, all of those softer skills.”
The key is to enable coaches to make the performance plan their own. “We want to be athlete-centred, coach-led and performance-supported. With athletes being at the forefront, the performance plan is more about how do we serve the athletes best in order to win or in order to perform? Being a coach-led environment, they will have the empowerment to be the decision maker, so to speak, but they should be working as an interdisciplinary team so that everybody co-creates it and everybody contributes to it. Obviously that is determined by the quality of the coach, because we are in that coach-led environment. How comfortable are they at leading that and what’s their approach to leading it?
“The coaches have a lot of freedom and empowerment in their roles, but we’ve said performance planning is mandatory. So we’re going to systemise this, there’s going to be a formal sign-off, and it must involve this, this and this. However, do it however you want, make it fit your personality, make it fit your world, make it fit your context.
“All of our performance programmes have been created through this systemised approach but it’s still bespoke and relevant to each coach. I think that’s really important within this whole conversation.”
The trick is in making coaches see the value. “You’ve got to have something that’s manageable and repeatable – that’s also what we mean by systemisation –otherwise you’ve got no chance of it being effective. It’s ultimately got to add value and contribute to performance, otherwise what’s the point in having a plan?”
28 Sep 2023
ArticlesMark Jarram of Loughborough University makes the case for systemisation in sport.
“They’re about people,” says Mark Jarram. “Sport is a relationship business and everything should be people-focused. It’s about a person over performer, whilst there will always be an element of perform-on-demand in sport. The purpose of KPIs is to keep people informed, keep them involved, interested and inspired.”
Jarram, the Head of Coaching & Performance Development for Sport at Loughborough University, is talking to the Leaders Performance Institute about the benefits of performance planning and how KPIs feed into the systemisation of performance.
“Things that get systemised get done,” he continues. “In the world of coaching and sport, there’s so much going on and there’s so many things to do and achieve. If you can find ways to systemise and automate certain things or certain interventions it means it will actually get done.”
In the first part of our interview, we discuss five benefits of taking the time to systemise a performance programme, from the performance planning of a head coach to the daily work of a practitioner.
“A lot of us in sport sometimes fall short of systematising the things that matter most,” says Jarram. “If you do a good job of keeping the main thing the main thing, it lends itself to achieving consistency.” Reviewing and closing feedback loops, or even the art of effective feedback is commonly the one thing that is not done or, wrongfully, often the first thing to leave out. Consistency is essential in the act of performance planning and, as Jarram explains, when there is a strategy in place, you can create the framework – the system – for your feedback interventions. “You’ll know that the intervention gets made rather than sometimes you do and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes it’s not relevant to have a feedback intervention but if you don’t systemise something then it’s less likely to be done and you may miss an opportunity for really good feedback.” Ultimately, “you’ve got to have something that’s manageable and repeatable otherwise there is no chance of it being effective. It’s got to add value.”
Jarram uses the example of an S&C coach to outline the benefits for coaches and practitioners alike. “What’s the S&C systemising?” he asks. “What are they tracking and what are their metrics? Is that systemised and automated? I guess it’s the same for all disciplines. What are they doing to create a form of measurement that can determine if they are making a difference. Systemisation can help to determine if we’re focusing on the right things and can create the opportunities for collaborative conversations.”
“Systemisation should prevent you from going astray and it should help make your workflows easier and bring efficiency,” says Jarram, with performance planning firmly in mind. “It allows – but doesn’t guarantee – the opportunity for complete clarity and building alignment amongst staff teams. Some of the best organisations and people I’ve been around hold clarity paramount. It contributes to the power of your purpose in that it promotes buy-in and supports your vision and mission. It allows the opportunity to ask ‘how can I contribute? What are my deliverables?’ and therefore lets you hold people accountable.” There is, he says, also an opportunity to establish what it takes to win. “There’s elements of that. Systemising helps us to confront brutal facts,” he adds. “There’s also an element of avoiding assumptions. Fewer assumptions will be made as you won’t be navigating blindly or be caught off guard. As humans, we hate being caught off guard – coaches, practitioners and athletes all do. How can we systemise something so that everyone is like ‘we know this is important and we know it’s coming’.”
Does a systemised approach to performance work better for bigger or smaller organisations? “It can be effective in both depending on the quality of the leader, quality of the conversations, quality of that aforementioned clarity,” says Jarram. A huge anchor for Jarram is “the quality of a conversation is determined by the quality of the question,” adding, “are we asking the right questions at the right times to complement performance, encourage development and provide collaboration, with the athletes at the forefront?” Even a programme with 60-plus athletes and those with a more intimate 10-plus can function efficiently if it is lead effectively. The experience of the coaches and practitioners is also significant. At Loughborough, which provides 64 sports, including 20 high performance programmes, there are sports with all full-time staff, others with part-time staff, some with placement students and a number with volunteers. “They all come with different expertise, they’re all at a different age and different stage of their journeys, so the maturity factor is real,” says Jarram. “We hear a lot about coaches wanting practitioners to know their sport really well. Do you have to be an expert in that sport to be an effective practitioner? Not necessarily as long as the practitioner is managed and led really well.”
Tensions surrounding the head coach are all but inevitable in performance planning. “At Loughborough, we’re trying to encourage coaches to take a needs-based approach – what are the needs of the team and the individual? Are you helping and supporting that rather than merely doing what you’re comfortable with? – that’s where there are frictions. Are they choosing the right style of play and the right systems and strategies to complement what it’s actually going to take to win?” Sometimes coaches can be wrong and sometimes what it takes changes mid-season or mid-cycle. “We’re saying ‘choose and commit to something based on the information you have and pursue it’. There should then be a review process because every sport evolves all the time. Did you misjudge what it takes to win in your league? What’s actually happening? What are other teams doing? Did you think you had a certain type of player in your team in pre-season and they turned out differently? You’ve got to pivot and adjust. It’s very natural to do and by systemising it we hope to shorten that timeline. Okay, let’s make sure we’re doing it when needed rather than later when it’s maybe too late.”
In part two, we will look at how Jarram and Loughborough support coaches in their performance planning.
What Leaders Performance Institute members said in a recent Virtual Roundtable around the challenges and possible solutions to finding a balance between short and long-term strategy.
Consequently, when thinking about these barriers, what solutions, approaches and changes are we looking to implement to find that balance? These were the two questions that formed part of the group conversations as part of our Virtual Roundtable discussions.
What are the major barriers we are experiencing?
To set the tone for our conversations and to ensure we were focusing more on solutions to our challenges around this topic, attendees were encouraged to share the main barriers to finding an effective balance for short and long-term strategy. As expected, there were a number of commonalities and we acknowledged the different contexts those on the call were operating in.
The need for week to week results and return on investment
As expected, the most popular response from the group was around the pressures, desires and expectations to win and see improvement quickly. Dovetailing this challenge was also the increased anxiety that can be experienced around ‘deemed success’ within certain roles and what the implications are if results don’t fall as we’d like. For those operating within the Olympic system, it was clear that there are pressures from funding partners to be seeing quicker return on investment which can also influence longer-term thinking. Outside of the final score or outcome, it was acknowledged that losses are not limited to just the end result – injuries or a lack of objective progress deters away from the long-term vision to a shorter-term, reactive mindset. Finally on this point, it was referenced that many environments can experience unrealistic expectations on performance outcomes that create uncertainty and misalignment from the outset.
Organisational alignment
Another common challenge outlined by the group was the lack of alignment when it comes to discussions around short and longer-term thinking. What are we witnessing on an organisational level? There is an absence of individual role clarity aligned to long-term thinking, unlike the short-term. There is a natural expertise or discipline bias that exists in environments which can impact a unified approach to both the short and long-term, thus impacting the ability to collaborate effectively. Mindset. This was an interesting reflection that arose when exploring both questions, is the organisational mindset aligned when it comes to finding this balance? Do those in the environment have confidence in the approach and that match realistic expectations?
To conclude this second major barrier, the group also suggested that communication is often a core part of this process that requires more attention – what is the interpretation of short and long, where does one stop and start? Is there consistent communication and space provided to dedicate time to both short and long-term thinking? It is also clear that there are structural challenges when it comes to alignment – are those in departmental lead roles aligned in both day-to-day performance focuses, but also the horizon scanning for the programme?
Shifting the dial and finding a better balance
As part of the group conversations, we looked to lean on one another’s experiences around how we are looking to affect the barriers in a positive way and what approaches or best practices are having the most impact.
Balancing short and long-term strategy requires ‘bravery’
Be brave and be deliberate was one of the key reflections that came from the conversations. Why did the term bravery emerge in the conversations? It was aligned to the fact that some bravery in terms of decision making is important to commit to something we believe in for the future. An environment from the Olympic world outlined that they found it more useful talking about ’12-Year Statements of Intent’. When looking at funding submissions, there was a short-term strategy set in the context of a ’12-Year Statement of Intent’ – it encouraged thinking around what 12 years ahead actually looks like and each time there is a conversation around why we’re doing something in a particular way, it gives the collective something to roll back to. Thinking that amount of time ahead does take bravery, but it provides an opportunity to ensure that the short and long-term are connected rather than having tension with one another.
Creating dedicated space and time
It was interesting to hear that many environments aren’t intentional in creating opportunities and space to talk about the long-term. Often, we are finding that the long-term thinking is morphing into the day-to-day and we aren’t moving into ‘new spaces’ to explore new thinking and how to carry information forward. We can do better at connecting the two through a methodology such as ‘plan, do, review’ which can be an effective approach. If we can get this to work, it can help to connect the short with the long-term.
The groups also felt it was important to note that creating space and time for these conversations should be a systemised approach, it shouldn’t just be a one off – integrate this into how you operate. Deliberately, every three to four months, come together and look at what we said we were going to do in the short-term and review how is that connecting to the long-term.
It was also encouraged that we are deliberate in creating space for different mindsets, there are different mental states required to think in the long-term vs the short-term. One is more creative and the other is more action-orientated. One environment from the Olympic system shared that a scenario they have had this year is preparing for Paris 2024 and submitting funding around what the strategy may be. The team did some work around futurology and brought in an external facilitator from the University of Oxford who does scenario planning and future thinking work.
As part of your organisational strategy, it was also suggested that allocating resource and reward processes related to long-term thinking and not just short-term delivery help find a healthier balance – often most of our resources are aligned to short-term delivery.
Clear vision and values
Start with the end in mind and work backwards from where the long-term strategy is targeted at was another key suggestion – what are the milestones, targets and priorities to close the gaps? It requires time and effort to continue to keep the strategy alive with the behaviours that underpin them and not just seeking short-term success.
Many environments witness frequent change where progress around long-term thinking can be stifled – look at handover and inductions with a focus on the culture and vision of the organisation to provide an element of sustainability and alignment. Creating a vision is the start, particularly bringing to life the ‘how’ we get there is vital for clarity. Have respect for all the different departments and teams within the organisation that have different priorities.
Accountability
Finding a balance between short and long-term thinking requires a level of accountability within the environment. There is an importance placed on ongoing communication, buy-in from all involved and accountability to the long-term plan. Outside of individual accountability, there is also a need for ‘programme accountability’ to reviewing (week-to-week, month-to-month, cycle-to-cycle) in a fashion that links with the long-term vision and strategy.
Changing the mindset
We have already briefly alluded to the idea of mindset or the mental spaces required for these kinds of thinking. There is an importance in being deliberate and recognising the different mindset required to think in the short and long term – an intent, purpose and real desire to affect change in a positive manner. There was a great reflection in the discussion that most of the team meetings we experience are often focused on the things we are reacting to on a daily or weekly basis. Maybe we need to make an intentional shift to ensure we don’t get caught up in the reactive mindset.
We also discussed language. Make the long term strategy as a concept more exciting to talk about – long-term strategy can often sound quite uninteresting, so how can we change the language to galvanise a group and create excitement? There is sometimes a deterrent that the ‘long-term’ is so far in the future you can’t realistically consider it, whereas it should be exciting to think about the future.
23 Aug 2023
ArticlesIn the second half of a our two-part interview, physical performance coach Ben Rosenblatt discusses behavioural nudges and the gamification of training.
But what can a practitioner do when an athlete doesn’t ask ‘why’?
“There’s a few options,” says Ben Rosenblatt, a physical performance coach who has worked with the England men’s football team, GB and England women’s hockey teams and Olympic Judoka amongst others.
“Do you know them well enough to understand why they don’t want to know? If it’s because they just want to get told, they’ve got trust, and they don’t want to know ‘why’, they just want to crack on with it and say ‘go on then, give us the programme’, I’ll commit to it, we’ll give it a crack, and then afterwards we can work out how well that worked.
“Do they not want to know ‘why’ because they’ve disengaged? If so, then you might just see them floating around a session or trying to disrupt others.
“The other one is that they’re just not that interested in physical conditioning and preparation because not everyone is. Most people take up sport or play high level sport not because they love doing press-ups and sit-ups, it’s because they love their sport.
“So you’ve got to try and understand the reason why they’ve disengaged and you’re also trying to find out, as a consequence, how they’re best going to receive information. So you can just ask some really simple questions to ascertain that. If it were you and me working together I’ll ask: ‘what’s the best way that we communicate with each other? What do you need from me? what’s important to you physically? what’s worked in the past?
“You might say: ‘I just need a programme and to crack on’. That’s absolutely fine and that’s what you’re going to get. But then we can also ask the athlete ‘can we review it every six weeks?’ This will give you both the opportunity to learn more about each other.”
This is the second part of our interview with Rosenblatt, who discussed behavioural mapping in the first instalment.
The conversation takes a turn into nudge theory, which is defined by Imperial College London as: ‘based upon the idea that by shaping the environment, also known as the choice architecture, one can influence the likelihood that one option is chosen over another by individuals.’
“This is where you bleed into the gamification of training and environmental nudges to encourage people to engage in stuff they might not necessarily want to,” says Rosenblatt, who in 2021 visited the Behavioural Insights Team (commonly known as the ‘Nudge Unit’), which previously operated under the auspices of the UK Government but is now run independently. It has informed his approach, as have visits to University College London, the University of Bedfordshire, and the Design Museum in London.
Returning to nudge theory, Rosenblatt says: “The basic principle is called EAST, which is making things: easy, accessible, social and timely.
“If you can make anything align with any of those four things, if you can make something really easy to engage in, really accessible, so it’s at the right time and the right place, it’s part of the social environment and it’s timely, it’s at the time when they should be doing it, then you’ll absolutely get the behaviour change.”
He cites an example from his time with the England men’s football team. “One problem was how we get the players to go in the pool immediately after training on a particular day with the physical performance team. Using nudge principles we decided to nick the players trainers and put them in the pool area! This meant, to walk back to the hotel, they had to go to the pool first! We also put recovery shakes in there and scattered some balls and some inflatables in the pool. So when they went to get their trainers, it was easier to take a shake and then jump in the pool with their mates rather than leave! They ended up staying in for half an hour or so.
Gamification can be a useful tool in training environments. “If it’s a group that does want to engage a little bit more, like the hockey girls, then you do things like have a synchronised swimming competition. Again, if you’re saying we’re going to do a pool recovery session, then the players will come in knackered, they’ll go up and down the pool for 10 minutes and get out. If we say we’re having a synchronised swimming competition and you’ve got 15 minutes to come up with a routine, they’re in there for 40 minutes working out what the routine is, hanging around the pool to play afterwards etc. Those are ways you can get players that just aren’t interested or who don’t want to know. Rather than giving them full autonomy, you create an environmental nudge that means that they have to dive in there literally.
“There’s other ways of doing it. One other idea is to play with the schedule. OK, so let’s say you’re trying to introduce a new form of training to the group (like strength work). Rather than make the session an additional training session, make it part of the original training session. So if they’re coming into the gym before going onto the grass, start with a familiar warm up, something they’re comfortable with and then you introduce the new activity as a competition. If it’s aligned to something you want them to get better at and want them to improve at; because it’s a competition everyone’s automatically engaged in it.
“Again, this is more relevant to athletes who aren’t as engaged with their physical preparation. But if you do a familiar warm up and there’s some little competition then they’re automatically going to engage in it. If it’s aligned to the physical outcome that you want, then they’re going to improve! The best way I’ve found of organising competition for maximum engagement is 1 1v1 competition in a team v team scenario… essentially you stack up points for your team by winning individual competitions against your opponents.
“You can then start to make it fun. We had an ongoing jump squat competition throughout the Euros where the players would compete for boxing belts based on how fast they were moving the bar. Training intensity and enjoyment went through the roof! All the athletes have noticed is that they’ve had a bit of fun and they’ve enjoyed themselves whilst being really physical. But if you start stacking that up over a course of two, three, four or five weeks, you’ve got a really strong physical conditioning response there.”
Ben Rosenblatt is the Founder of 292 Performance.
Want to discuss environmental nudges with Ben?
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @ben_rosenblatt
22 Aug 2023
ArticlesIn the second session of his Performance Support Series on talent development, Edd Vahid of the English Premier League discusses individualisation and interdisciplinary support.
For the second session of the series, Vahid outlined a few aims for those in attendance, as we continue to explore the ‘5 I’s’ model first shared in session one. If you missed out on the first part of this series, you can read about the model and other key points here. The aims were as followed:
Being individualised
As part of the first session of this series, attendees were asked to rank themselves around their effectiveness of the ‘5 I’s’ model. On a ranking of 1-5, below were the responses for the two parts of the model we explored in session two:
These responses provided some interesting insights into where we think we are in relation to our talent development frameworks and environment. Providing individualised and interdisciplinary support, scored highest out of the five elements of the model, but with clear room for improvement.
To help us think about the importance of being truly individualised, whilst also appreciating the tensions and challenges that come along with this, Vahid brought in some of the work from author Todd Rose and renowned sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to elevate these points.
The End of Average
In Rose’s The End of Average, there was an anecdote highlighting bodies of research by the US Air Force into why there were so many incidents, despite having some of the best pilots in the world and the best technology. One of the key summaries was that the cockpit was built upon the average needs of a pilot rather than the specific needs.
Out of 4,063 pilots, not a single airman could fit in the cockpit, within the average range on all 10 dimensions. One pilot might have a longer-than-average arm length, but a shorter-than-average leg length. Another pilot might have a big chest but small hips. Even more astonishing, (Lt. Gilbert S.) Daniels discovered that if you picked out just three of the ten dimensions of size — say, neck circumference, thigh circumference and wrist circumference — less than 3.5 per cent of pilots would be average sized on all three dimensions. Daniels’s findings were clear and incontrovertible. There was no such thing as an average pilot. If you’ve designed a cockpit to fit the average pilot, you’ve actually designed it to fit no one.
This passage in The End of Average highlights that being truly individualised is crucial in allowing us to optimise the support and impact we can have on individuals. It is also worth noting that individualisation continues to be a challenge with the scales we are operating at, and the resources we have at our disposal.
Habitus, field and capital
To align to the work of Rose, we complemented this with the research of Bourdieu, whose work encourages us think more deeply about ‘the individual’ and, in our context, who we are trying to provide individualised support for.
Bourdieu talked about the concepts of habitus, field and capital.
‘Habitus’ is the ‘product of history, (that) produces individual and collective practices. It ensures the active presence of past experiences, which, deposited in each organism in the form of schemes of perception, thought and action… Bourdieu and Wacquant suggest that when an individual encounters an environment that is compatible with their established habitus, they are like ‘fish in water’. It’s important to recognise that we all have individual habituses; we’re different.
‘Field’ is the social arena, where people compete for resources and demonstrate their power.
‘Capital’ is the notion of competing in a field and enhance social position – individuals require capital. Different forms of capital might exist and potentially include physical and economic. The new environment (field) establishes the cultural, social and symbolic. An individual must adapt if they have aspirations for distinction and subsequent progression. Relevant to us, how are we creating experiences to better prepare our talent for what’s next?
The tensions in being individualised
We know that being individualised is an important element of an effective talent development model. However, we must acknowledge the tensions and challenges that can exist around this. Some of these tensions and challenges can be ironed out, some just exist and are hard to eradicate. Based on some of Vahid’s experiences, he shared a few that he often sees:
The individual and / or the team. Cohesion is an important part of a high-performing team. There could be a tension in an individual who isn’t in the higher grading from an individual performance point of view, but is a strong contributor to team cohesion or getting the best out of others. What do you do?
Performance vs potential: many environments experience the challenge of defining potential – what is it and how are we assessing it? How predictable can we be in that assessment? There are many examples of individuals who were judged to not be at a particular level, but have moved to another environment and thrived.
Club and organisational philosophy. It depends on the organisation and what the philosophy is. Is it about prioritising and getting one or two athletes in the first team environment? Therefore, you would be in your own right to focus on A-grade talent and not so much those that might support the cohesion of the group.
Interdisciplinary support
‘If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail’ – Abraham Maslow
At the heart of these conversations, the value of having multiple eyes and different perspectives that add value. An effective multidisciplinary team, working in an interdisciplinary fashion is reliant on an inclusive environment where everyone can turn up and truly express themselves and feel comfortable in contribution. How do we get an interdisciplinary function to work effectively?
The conditions
Psychological safety is an underpinning concept that supports interdisciplinarity. The work of Professor Timothy Clark at Durham University, a specialist in environmental humanities and deconstruction, suggests that the first step is about inclusion safety and how we as leaders or individuals are contributing to a team to ensure there is suitable inclusion into conversations, allowing everyone to contribute.
Author Patrick Lencioni’s work around the ‘The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team’ suggests that the heart of dysfunction is the absence of trust. Invest time to ensure that the individuals can show up to enable the multidisciplinary team to work in an interdisciplinary fashion.
Judgment criteria. When giving consideration to how disciplines or individuals are judged, these have to be aligned with the organisational vision. Each discipline can have their own detailed judgment criteria and if that is not aligned it can cause separation which undermines the ability to work in an interdisciplinary fashion. To underline this point, it’s also important to have interdisciplinary markers of success.
Role clarity. A consideration for how the various disciplines are inducted for how they contribute to the bigger picture.
How do we physically create the conditions for conversations? How are you working to create flow and connection in an organisation? In Edd’s experience in talent development environments, there’s been a strong push to get multidisciplinary teams sitting closer together to enhance interdisciplinarity but do we need to be doing more than just where people sit and creating more conditions within the environments to support this way of operating?
In the first instalment of our two-part interview, physical performance coach Ben Rosenblatt considers the benefits of behaviour mapping a programme.
“My starting point is that no one is trying to do it,” says physical performance coach Ben Rosenblatt.
“As a high performance athlete, everyone’s got the intent to go and win. No one turns up to training every day thinking ‘I’m going to be difficult today’. You can turn up and say ‘I don’t really fancy it’ because that’s what humans do, but no one has the intention to be bad.”
Rosenblatt was the Lead Men’s Physical Performance Coach at the Football Association between 2016 and 2023 and was part of Gareth Southgate’s staff at two Fifa World Cups and one Uefa European Championships. He has worked across a series of sports and has worked at both the English Institute of Sport (now UK Sports Institute) and the British Olympic Association.
In the first part of our interview, Rosenblatt makes the case for a framework that enables a practitioner to bridge performance gaps.
‘Things didn’t match up’
Rosenblatt explains that his approach when entering a programme has evolved, although his principles remain unchanged. He says: “It is a case of identifying what the team’s ambitions are, seeing how resonant they are with what they’re trying to achieve, and then identifying the behaviours that should be in place to deliver that.”
He recalls an example from an Olympic sport where those two were misaligned. “One team wanted to be the best in the world and the most physically dominant,” Rosenblatt continues. “For me, those things didn’t match up, particularly when I spoke to the athletes and coaches and heard a different narrative.
“When I dug into it with the athletes and coaches and asked ‘what are the hallmarks and successful traits of teams you think are going to enable you to win and how are we going to do it?’ Then I quickly realised that their ambitions around being physically fittest and the most dominant were probably not the thing that was going to help us win in the Olympics.”
A gold medal-winning performance did not require a well-executed 30-15 intermittent fitness test or bleep test. “There were problems with basic things like stability and robustness and just being able to train frequently enough. We can go and chase all the sexy stuff, which physical conditioning coaches really want to do like speed and agility, strength and power, but what we really need to do is keep the players playing consistently and increasing volume and intensity for their sport-specific training because that’s what will make them a better team.”
‘How does that individual learn?’
Why might a team fall into a poor behavioural pattern in the first place?
“It typically comes from a gap in capabilities, knowledge, skills and experience,” says Rosenblatt. “It can also be their opportunity, so the social environment they’re in; and then their motivation.”
He explains that a coach’s understanding of athlete motivation may be flawed. “A coach might say ‘they just don’t want it enough’ or ‘they just don’t know enough’ then you can end up in a fight with an athlete who says ‘what are you talking about? I’m doing everything I can’ or you can try to bamboozle them with knowledge that they don’t really know how to receive,” he continues.
“An example might be: ‘I’m going to give you some detailed information about why strength training is important’ and they’re like ‘I don’t really care’ or ‘I don’t have the framework to understand what you’re telling me’. You’ve got to identify where those gaps in behaviours and opportunities are. So if it is around knowledge, skills and experience, then you’ve got to ask the question ‘how do they learn? How does that individual learn? How do they best receive and retain information?’
“That might be different as a head coach compared to a young athlete or even a seasoned athlete. They’re going to learn and experience physical training differently. They’re also different generations; they’re going to have different social values placed on them as well. Understanding the individual and how they learn and receive knowledge is really important.”
‘Not everyone had seen Rocky’
Rosenblatt’s understanding came from a growing appreciation of motivation science, which he had previously overlooked.
The penny dropped prior to the 2016 Rio Olympics, when he worked concurrently with GB judokas and women’s field hockey players. Whilst the Judokas wanted to receive a training programme and be told what to do, this approach didn’t work with the women’s hockey team.
“I tried to understand the motivational science behind it,” he says. “I assumed my generation, my background, I was brought up in a boxing gym and I assumed everyone had watched Rocky and that’s what kind of motivation meant to everyone else. But actually, it’s about the athlete needing to have autonomy and feel like they’re making a decision; is there a connection between the work they’re currently doing and what they’re aspiring to achieve and do they feel like they’re getting better?
“So if you really want to make sure an athlete is motivated to commit to the programme and commit to certain behaviours that are different to the ones they’re currently engaging in, is there a connection between what they’re trying to do and what they’re trying to achieve? The tangible – can they see it? Have they had a choice in the path that they’re taking?
“They might not have the skills and experience to write the programme or to take all the direction, but there still has to be a choice somewhere along the line. ‘Do you want to train at 3 or 3:30?’ If there’s some level of choice it makes people feel more connected to it.
“The other one is progression. Do they actually feel they’re getting better and it’s achieving the things they’re really interested in? I think that was the biggest mistake I made with the hockey group when I came in.
“That comes back to helping the players connect and recognise what’s important to the things they’re trying to achieve. I think that’s always a tricky one when people start introducing strength training, in particular, into team sports or any kind of training for athletes.
“I’ve certainly had that experience in football. There’s a big disconnect between lifting weights and performance. Particularly when the first thing you experience when you lift weights for the first time is that you get sore and you can’t move for two or three days. There’s a real disconnect with that. So I think you’ve got to recognise the experience that the athlete is actually living. That’s really important. Also, work out the different solutions and strategies that are available for that player at that particular time.”
Ben Rosenblatt is the Founder of 292 Performance.
Want to discuss performance behaviours with Ben?
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @ben_rosenblatt
Kate Warne-Holland of the Lawn Tennis Association discusses the competition formats introduced at the height of Covid. Such were the opportunities for player-coach interaction that these formats have been retained as we continue to emerge from the pandemic.
“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”.
