By Sarah Evans, Rachel Woodland & Lottie Wright

You might have thought that the UK Sports Institute, US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, Australian Institute of Sport and High Performance Sport New Zealand were the fiercest of rivals and would be unlikely allies in sharing high performance practice and intelligence.

However, the quartet have formed an unlikely partnership for the good of female athletes across the globe and with the aim of pushing forwards advancements in female health research and practice.

The result is the Global Alliance and, on our most recent Women’s High Performance Sport Community call, we were joined by Dr Helen Fulcher from HPSNZ, Dr Amber Donaldson from USOPC, Dr Rachel Harris from the AIS, and Dr Richard Burden from UKSI, to discuss how it works.

All four institutes have made their own way in providing additional focus and resource for female athlete health, starting at different points in time across the last ten years.

All four have focused on education. The AIS, UKSI and USOPC have had further branches into research; HPSNZ have looked at processes and systems linked to technology; and the USOPC have had to consider partnerships that help navigate a geographically large country and complex health system.

However, all four acknowledge that despite their positions of privilege there are limits to time and resource in this area, and all four are aware of what improving health for females, who typically suffer more injuries and illnesses than males, could do for raising levels of competition. The opportunity the group of four are close to bringing to reality is for an alliance to support globally with raising minimum levels of understanding when it come to female athlete health.

The formation of the Global Alliance

The world of elite sport is quite small, so when travelling to conferences and talks on these spaces, the group realised that they are all doing the same things, with limited resources and time. So the premise of the Alliance is to combine resources and save time across the group. After all, as Burden asked, “what’s the point in spending lots of money people don’t have on education resources when it already exists publicly?” Whilst bumping into one another, the group organically had conversations on how they can work together to increase efficiencies without crossing boundaries of competition. “We are all under-resourced, we’re overstretched in terms of the time that we’re wanting to spend in this space,” said Harris. “We really wanted to try and allow the people that are working in our sporting organisations to be more proactive.”

Traditionally seen as rivals, these organisations are now collaborating for the benefit of female athletes across the globe. The primary goal is to collaborate on female health initiatives, leveraging each organisation’s expertise and resources. This collaboration aims to enhance the health and performance of female athletes by sharing knowledge and best practices across regions.

The Alliance’s main objectives include…

• Sharing best practices and resources: “You can’t do everything on your own,” said Burden, “or your organisation can’t be everything to everybody.” By pooling their collective knowledge, Alliance members can develop and implement the most effective health initiatives and signpost others towards the best practice or research already implemented by their colleagues in different regions. The dream is to be able to give people one place to come to, and then to be directed to other places. Ultimately, no individual person can be an expert in everything, and we should always remain open to the idea that someone might know more than we do.
• Benchmarking and baselining efforts: The goal, as Fulcher explained, is to “create a baseline that is higher”. Members of the Alliance will regularly assess and combine their efforts to ensure continuous improvement which, in theory, should result in healthier female athletes and higher levels of competition.
• Addressing misinformation: Simultaneously, the Alliance would ensure that accurate and reliable information about female health has the potential to reach all athletes, especially those in regions with limited access to such information. The group are passionate on making sure that the information available would be representative of the global athlete population, and therefore diverse, whilst being evidence-based. You want to be able to say “‘as of now, this is the best way to treat X’,” said Donaldson. Athletes from different nations will also help spread accurate information about health topics, such as menstrual cycles and nutrition, through their platforms. The Alliance recognises the influence of social media and aims to create content that can be shared widely to reach a broader audience.
• Speeding up progress: As a collective the alliance can move practices along more quickly, be that through raising baseline levels faster, or by being able to increase sample sizes.  The group have an inherent belief that the collective is greater than the individual. They also want to make sure that as relatively well-resourced nations with greater access, they welcome in their colleagues in countries where access and resources may be more limited.
• Conducting collaborative research: One approach to speeding up progress would be to continue the research work that is currently happening in silos. There is potential in multicenter research projects, as Burden explained. He said: “If you can combine multicenter research, with those multicenters being in different countries around the globe, then you are naturally going to get a more diverse, rich database and, therefore, the insights that we’re going to be able to get from that are going to be just way more valuable for everybody”. It’s still a competitive environment. “We still absolutely want to beat all of the other people in the Alliance that we’re forming here on the medal table,” said Harris, “but we certainly see that the things that we’re doing in this space are not about state secrets.”
• Providing a blueprint: The aim is to develop a central repository of trustworthy information to which athletes, stakeholders, and organisations can refer. It’s not often that cross-country collaboration happens but, by bringing this Alliance together, a blueprint for collaboration, and how to ‘do’ it, can be created; from ideation to doing; sharing learnings as they emerge, especially when they are collaborating on an important topic area. They want to show how a collaboration can start and, ultimately, how to ensure longevity beyond the four current members.

The Alliance faces several challenges, including:

• Getting things through layers of bureaucracy. The solution is commitment to sticking with it, but then being inventive with methods of information dissemination.
• Ensuring that the resources and information generated are visible and accessible to athletes and other stakeholders globally. This involves understanding and appealing to the way in which athletes take on and digest information. It will also require strategic communication and collaboration with local leaders and organisations.
• The need to combat misinformation. The alliance will provide rigorous, trustworthy information that cuts through the noise of inaccurate or misleading content. It will be able to share aligned messaging globally.
• Resources are not limitless. Hence the need to come together to collaborate and combine resources for a scale of economies effect.

• Time is precious. In addition, the numbers of athletes going through some of the specific female health experiences can be quite small, so to learn and provide advancements could take much more time if each institute tried to do so on their own. The multicenter research projects should counter this.

• To be truly representative globally, the Alliance will have to grow to be culturally diverse and account for different languages and time zones. The group recognise that this will be a challenge and it might take grit and determination to make it happen.

The alliance is committed to overcoming all of these challenges by building robust, reliable resources and ensuring they are effectively communicated and accessible to all athletes.

A proactive and inclusive strategy

The Global Alliance is a comprehensive approach to enhancing female athlete health that prioritises:

• Collaboration: The Alliance is built on shared values, humility, and a commitment to improving female athlete health through collective effort. “We’re all in exactly the same position and we’re all really wanting to do the same thing,” said Harris.
• Education and resources: A key focus is on creating and sharing educational materials that are accessible and evidence-based. As Harris said: “We felt that by ensuring we could create some of these resources, they could put more of that time into looking after their athletes.”
• Future vision: The Alliance is aiming for a sustainable, impactful approach that can adapt and grow to meet the needs of female athletes globally and improve female health for athletes. It wants to raise the standards of competition along the way and, through its multicenter research, increase the number and diversity of research participants and insights. The Alliance may not be everyone’s answer, but could be a connector, with a central platform for sharing information gathered across the board.

Top tips

Just start! If you’re working in a small organisation where you can’t produce education modules or you can’t fund research, there’s no harm in just starting a conversation. Build your own networks, forge connections, and don’t be isolated.

Find people with the same values and intent. “And that’s not to say that there is no kind of diverse thinking within our group,” said Burden. “But the underpinning values within the Global Alliance and the work that we’re trying to do are all shared.”

It’s not about ‘us’ but a bigger purpose. Fulcher spoke of building communities within your area of expertise or within your own nation, but then taking that further. “That’s within your specialty, within your area or your nation,” she said. “I think it’s a natural step to build an international community; and we do have them, but they’ve been a bit ad hoc.” The Global Alliance is, as she added, an opportunity to raise standards across female sport. “The focus is not just on individuals having great connections but what can we collectively do better for this group of athletes that we all care about.”

Stay curious and be friendly. “One of the biggest things is to be humble,” said Donaldson. “Really coming to this platform being  humble and wanting to learn, wanting to contribute is key.”

Find out what works for you. You can learn from others but try to ascertain what works for you in your context too. Donaldson said: “I can tell you exactly what we do, but you’re not going to be able to replicate it like for like.”

Those in-person moments can be critical. “Those in-person conversations can help build relationships,” said Donaldson, who explained that the Alliance meets periodically. “You can also get more done when you have those conversations.”

Involve coaches in the education piece. Fulcher said: “Make sure coaches feel comfortable enough so that if a certain issue is brought up, they know where to direct traffic and tell people where to go for help.”

By Aaron Walsh

What do we believe to be the most effective way to develop our people?

Do we focus on increasing capability or reducing interference as a primary strategy?

In theory, most would agree with increasing capability but, in practice, our coaching models are often dominated by reducing interference.

There’s a time and a place for work-ons but, from a mental perspective, when we overfocus on weaknesses, players can become oversensitive to threats that could impact performance. Their thoughts drift towards what could go wrong and how those weaknesses could be exposed.

When we focus on their strengths, they are more likely to look for opportunities to express those positive points of difference. Rather than being anxious about performing, they are excited.

Your mental performance work should align with your overall performance philosophy and beliefs about how we get the most out of the people we leads, but once a team has decided on an approach to increasing its mental performance, there needs to be some strategy around the work. To do this, there are three questions to guide us:

1. What is the vision for the work?
2. What philosophy will drive the work?
3. What framework will we build the work upon?

Creating a vision for the work

Let’s start with the end in mind. What would success look like if we nail this work?

This question lets us capture something tangible and provides strategic direction with clear outcomes. It anchors us in reality while buffering us from the temptation to be reactive when various challenges arise.

Here is an example of a vision statement we can use:

‘We want to produce self-sufficient athletes who can embrace the demands of being a professional athlete while delivering their best when it matters the most.’

Success is clear. There is no ambiguity, and everyone involved in the program can align around this vision.

Capturing your philosophy

Secondly, having a philosophy about how we will achieve the vision is vital. This is more about ‘how’ we will approach the work and what will guide the delivery of the program. This should capture and reflect our broader high-performance beliefs around growth and development.

There is an equation we can use to help us define this.

High Performance = Capability – Interference

This definition poses a critical question for everyone in the performance space.

As asked above, when finding the most effective way to develop our people, do we focus on increasing capability or reducing interference as a primary strategy?

We can all think of coaches who start a review with clips about poor aspects of the team’s performance and it is normal for players to have those aforementioned work-ons at the beginning of each week.

This is not to say that there is no place for this, but we select players because of what they can do. It’s their strengths and their ability to impact the game that make them valuable members of a team. Furthermore, if all we give them are areas of their game to work on and if they change week by week depending on their game, then we endanger development through inconsistency.

Whatever your agreed approach to mental performance, it should align with our overall performance philosophy and beliefs about how to get the most out of the people we lead.

The right framework

With the vast nature of subjects and focus areas within sports psychology, it is often daunting for providers and teams to know where to start. However, a simple framework can create a strategic approach that brings clarity and direction to the work. This prevents the provider from bouncing around different subjects weekly and not building anything of substance.

The framework above is anchored in the philosophy introduced previously, which states mental skills exist to help people grow and maximise their capability. It intentionally starts with foundational subjects that build upon each other. The reason for this is linked to the growing prominence of the mental side of performance. With more discussions occurring, more articles being written, and the emergence of social media, there is a danger of replacing foundations with tools.

Here’s what I mean: subjects like mindfulness, breathing, and visualisation are helpful and, in some cases, necessary. However, they are just tools that can help under pressure. Dealing with pressure will be much more effective if these tools are married to other critical mental skills. This framework aims to introduce these skills systematically and purposely so the athlete is well equipped for the various challenges they will face. From experience, athletes who know how to grow themselves and their mindset find pressure, something they can face and overcome. Giving a few tools won’t accomplish that.

Grow yourself

The first aspect of the framework lays the foundation for mental performance. When discussing this with an athlete, we can introduce and define it by asking five questions.

1. Why do you play the sport? (Purpose)
2. What are you trying to accomplish? (Goals and aspirations)
3. How will you get there? (Creating a performance plan)
4. When will you do the work? (Self-management and Ownership)
5. Who is in your circle? (Support)

Purpose: We want athletes connected to a purpose that fuels their performance. Every athlete will face challenging periods throughout their career, whether it’s injury, non-selection, or a loss of form; there are moments where doubt emerges that can potentially derail their journey. Being connected to why they play the sport and accessing that passion provides perseverance and focus during these difficult times.

Goals: Knowing what you are trying to accomplish is vital for any athlete. To understand this, here is a simple analogy. When we want to get somewhere in our vehicles, we set the destination in our GPS. We do this so we don’t get lost and waste time getting to where we want to. This is the same for an athlete; without clear goals, they can spend much time going in different directions and not get closer to their desired destination.

Planning: Once we know where we are going, we must understand how we will get there. This is where a good plan is invaluable. To continue the analogy above, a GPS provides clear steps so we arrive at the right place at the right time. Many athletes set goals and fail to determine what they must do to get there. A performance roadmap creates a focus on the right areas of development that will be critical to achieving what the athlete has set out to do

Ownership: I was recently asked what characteristics are shared among the best athletes I have worked with. Though there are many that they share, one sticks out. They take ownership of their careers. They drive the different aspects of performance and see those around them as key supporters. They don’t make excuses or play “victim” if things don’t go their way. One key aspect of this is how they use their time; they have a weekly schedule that is linked to the goals they have and the plans they have in place. They are purposeful and hold themselves accountable.

Support: The final aspect of growing yourself is about support. Throughout their career, athletes will have numerous and different perspectives offered by coaches, support staff, and agents. They need to be clear about what voices are essential. Having a clear support circle is critical so they stay on track and have the encouragement to get where they want to be.

Grow your mindset

The second aspect of the framework is grow your mindset. American psychologist Michael Gervais defines mindset as “how we see ourselves and the world we live in.” This is critical for athletes. Here are a few examples of the power of the mindset

Constant Improvement: Are athletes focused on getting better every day? Do they have a process in place to achieve this? Can they be consistent regardless of what happened the day or week before? Can they manoeuvre through the highs and lows of the game and remain anchored to their pursuit of being their best? They can reduce all the noise of competing by returning to a simple question: “How do I get better today?”

Opportunity-focused: Do they view themselves as competent, and is it an opportunity to express themselves? Or do they see themselves as imposters, and is the game a place where they get exposed? One mindset produces trust and excitement, while the other produces doubt and anxiety, both significantly impacting performance.

Antifragile: Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb defines antifragility ‘as something beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.’ This is particularly relevant for athletes, as adversity, disappointment, and failure are common obstacles they will face. Do they see this as something that destroys them or something they can learn from and be better than ever? Their mindset towards challenges is a significant indicator of future decline or growth.

Growing under pressure

The final aspect of the framework is how we deal with pressure. Most people see pressure as something to be avoided at all costs. Certain situations cause deeply uncomfortable feelings. Without the right strategy, pressure can feel unmanageable and, at times, paralysing. For athletes, there is no option to avoid pressure if they want to be successful. Therefore, they must have the tools to approach it confidently and believe it is a place where they can succeed.

As mentioned above, there are many practices and tools related to pressure. Once we have the foundations in place, they are valuable. For the sake of brevity, I won’t go into all the tools, but there is a clear outcome no matter what we use.

We want to be able to deliver our best when it matters the most.

Below are three things we can focus on to help our athletes be at their best in the big moments

1. Get calm: Under pressure, the nervous system can cause chaos. Our minds begin to race, and our bodies react. Our first port of call is getting calm so we can deal with the moment in front of us.

2. Get clear: Once we are calm, we need to manage our focus. Often, under pressure, there is a temptation to go to the outcome of a game or the consequence of getting things wrong. We want to eliminate that distraction and focus on the task at hand.

3. Let go: The final reality that can help us when pressure is present is letting go. This requires us to trust what we have at that moment and surrender. The more we try to control, the less instinctive we will become. Athletes are at their best when they are free, trust their skillset, and play what’s in front of them.

In conclusion, a mental performance program will only be effective if there is a clear strategy behind it. Here are a few questions to help stimulate this:

1. Do you have a clear vision for the program?
2. What philosophies will undergird and guide the work?
3. What framework is best for your team?

Further reading from Aaron Walsh:

Why the Upswell in Demand for Mental Skills Is Not Being Translated into Effective Work

By John Portch

When Great Britain’s wheelchair rugby team came off the court in Paris, their disappointment was mixed with immense pride.

The team narrowly lost their bronze medal match at the Paris Paralympics 50-48 against Australia, but captain Gavin Walker was positive.

“If you’d have asked me two years ago, I’d have probably snatched your hand off for the experience of playing for a bronze medal,” he said, mindful of the transition the team has been in since winning gold in Tokyo.

“We go into another rebuilding process, another four years ahead of us and looking towards LA now,” he continued. “[We will be] growing the sport, putting time into grassroots and developing the team going forward.”

Not that any stone was left unturned in the build-up. “Our performance in Paris highlighted the progress we are making and confirmed that we remain at the forefront of wheelchair rugby,” says Lee Stutely, Great Britain’s Team Manager.

She is speaking to the Leaders Performance Institute about Great Britain’s two team camps that took place at St George’s Park in Staffordshire before the Games. The first, a seven-day visit in January, focused on their continuing preparations; the second, a four-day camp in August, represented the final taper towards Paris.

Both were a result of smart planning, with Stutely taking a lead on the logistics of the camps. “We came and rec’ed, just me and our Head of Performance Support & Science Barry Mason,” adds Stutely. “Then the coaches came with some athletes to check the playing surfaces.” From there, the coaches and performance team came together with Walker and vice-captain Stu Robinson to map out the sessions and structure.

All reflect with satisfaction on the work that was done in the last cycle. “The team’s trajectory is clearly on the right path toward further medal success,” says Stutely, “and we are driven by our commitment to high standards and continuous improvement.”

The team will conduct a post-Paris debrief to identify its strengths and weaknesses. “We will be hoping to learn if the systems and processes in place were effective,” adds Stutely, who emphasises how important it is to retain and refine successful strategies. “We will also examine what can be improved and what we should stop doing. As Paris showed, there is little between the top teams. We need to identify where can we get our marginal gains and what can increase our competitive edge in the next cycle.”

Chris Bond of team Australia is on the ground after a clash with Aaron Phipps of Team Great Britain during the Wheelchair Rugby Group B game Australia vs Great Britain. (Photo: Marco Mantovani/Getty Images)

The home of England

Great Britain qualified for Paris by finishing runners-up at the 2023 European Championships.

With their passage secured, the team could step up their preparations. While happy with their usual training facility at the Lilleshall National Sports Centre in Shropshire, Stutely and her colleagues felt that a change of scenery could reset minds and take players out of their comfort zones.

The 330-acre facility at SGP fitted the bill. Stutely says: “It made them more aware that they were moving onto a competition and preparing for something special rather than just being their home from home training environment.”

SGP is also the home of 24 England football teams. “We have quite a few football fans within our team so they were excited,” adds Stutely. “It’s historic and other senior teams have trained here, such as the England women’s rugby team. The venue is awesome for us because it’s accessible; and everything – training facilities and accommodation – is in one location.”

In addition to an onsite Hilton Hotel, the complex boasts 14 state-of-the-art football pitches, which can be configured for a variety of sports, as well as a range of indoor facilities including a full 3G pitch, a multifunctional sports hall, gym, hydrotherapy pools and a cryotherapy chamber.

The SGP team were on hand to allay any concerns. “Kevin Sanders was very good to us,” says Stutely of SGP’s Elite Sport & Partnerships Manager. The team could count on court time, gym time, meeting rooms and private dining rooms. “The Hilton were also very good at making sure we had as many accessible rooms as possible and that everything was suitable for our athletes’ needs.”

SGP is the home of England’s Para football teams and has long been committed to ensuring that the nation’s disability and impaired teams have equal access to the complex’s high performance facilities. It’s a point of pride for SGP, even if this process remains a work in progress, as Becky Bullock, the SGP Customer Account Lead at the Football Association, tells the Leaders Performance Institute.

“We acknowledge there is always more we can do,” she says. “We are continually learning, listening and striving to improve, and we remain dedicated to incorporating best practice into the future design and development of our facilities to be accessible for all.”

Aaron Phipps of Team Great Britain competes during Bronze medal match between Australia and Great Britain. (Photo: Aitor Alcade/Getty Images for IPC)

The future

The Great Britain team is aware of its legacy beyond the court, with Walker taking the opportunity after the bronze medal match to address the audience watching at home in the UK.

“For fans out there and people who are watching this, we’re all playing this sport after starting life with a disability or going through some sort of traumatic injury,” he said. “The fact that any athlete in the Paralympics is competing shows they’ve overcome adversity and everyone should be proud of any performance. I guess that’s the main message for anyone out there that is struggling – this is something that can get you out of those dark times.”

Wheelchair rugby, as Walker alluded to, is an egalitarian sport. It is built on ensuring that players with different care needs can compete together. Players are assigned a points-based value based on their functional ability ranging from 0.5 (those with the highest support needs) to 3.5 points (those with the fewest). The total point value of a four-player team cannot exceed 8.0 points unless it includes a female player, which affords a team an extra 0.5 points, taking the maximum total to 8.5 points.

“Some team bonding happens because of accessibility issues, the whole ‘no-one is left behind’ thing,” says Stutely. “They always look after each other.”

The British Paralympic Association works with Games authorities to ensure that athlete accommodation at all Paralympics is suitable for their teams’ needs. Stutely, who took part in her fifth Games in Paris, believes that environments have generally improved since the London 2012 Games raised the bar.

“As staff and athletes, we spend a lot of time being adaptable to the environment we enter,” she says. “Overcoming any challenges and learning how to control people’s mindsets when things are not going the right way is so important.”

Looking further ahead, Stutely is excited for Great Britain’s prospects. “We also have a promising depth of young and talented athletes. This blend of experience and emerging talent positions us well to continue competing at the highest level and achieve even greater accomplishments on the world stage.”

Further reading:

Pre-Season Preparations: Why a Home from Home Can Make All the Difference

An article brought to you in collaboration with

By Luke Whitworth

While it is important for analysts to have a minimum technical skillset, it is not the be-all and end-all – emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills are just as important.

This is just one of the misapprehensions that continue to dog the world of performance analysis; a range that spans from data collection and reliability to value capture and integration.

All were addressed in the third and final session of a virtual roundtable series hosted by the British Association of Sport & Exercise Sciences [BASES] and the Leaders Performance Institute.

Dr John Francis of the University of Worcester and Dr Denise Martin from Atlantic Technological University in Ireland were on hand to lead a discussion titled ‘Advances in performance analysis: what the research is telling us’ that sought to provide insightful tips for attendees.

Integrating practitioner and academic expertise

In a straw poll, more than half of attendees declared that use academic resources to support processes and projects. It’s a promising start, but Francis was in no doubt that the applied world and academia can and should work closer together.

He and his colleagues surveyed 175 analysts on the time they spent collecting good, accurate and meaningful data and how they tested that data before providing key insights to the end user. The cohort delivered several insights:

• Experienced practitioners excel in aligning KPIs, team goals, data systems and accuracy due to their expertise.
• That said, both experienced practitioners and those early in their careers need refined operational definitions and firm reliability checks to ensure KPIs reflect true performance and provide actionable insights.
• System familiarisation and reliability checks take time – streamlined processes and adequate time are both crucial.
• The same system familiarisation and reliability checks differ from user to user. Standardised training and reliability testing methods could improve consistency and accuracy.
• Regular data checks could make data clearer and crisper – too many teams test only at the start or end of the season.

The PRECISE Framework

Francis and his colleagues have devised a framework aimed at delivering recommendations related to validity, familiarisation and reliability. Their research is currently subject to peer review but does shed light on the question of integrated approaches.

The PRECISE Framework addresses those issues listed above:

• Promote collaboration – in practice sessions; periodic manual checks.
• Rely on expertise – deliver regular feedback; rely on automated processes.
• Employ video clips – guarantee exposure time and ensure an efficient resolution process.
• Customise adaptability – encourage collaborative learning and continuous cross checks.
• Illuminate definitions – enable incremental learning; reliability standards should be individualised.
• Synthesise philosophy – provide structured learning; pursue the systematic identification of issues.
• Ensure effective software processes – set comprehensive guidelines; enhance with video.

Who writes your team’s job descriptions?

As discussed, the search for unicorns is counterproductive, but then that is often a by-product of poorly-conceived job descriptions. Is enough time being spent on positioning them in the right way?

Attendees swiftly pointed out a series of challenges:

• The HR challenge: too often there is a lack of understanding from those without the expertise. Other times, the issues is the creation of the job description and the hiring process.
• The pursuit of ‘unicorns’: it bears repeating. Emphasise soft skills – hardly any descriptions mention soft or interpersonal skills.
• Verbal and visual communication: those softer skills in action – good communication skills are integral to building good working relationships as part of a broad team.
• Who needs to be involved? It depends on the context, but you may need the performance director, technical leads, research & development and HR when hiring an analyst.

The research of Francis and his colleagues also observed that too few job advertisements provide a feel for the environment in which someone will be entering.

On this front, they have recommendations for both organisations and applicants across four areas:

1. Employer familiarity information

Organisation: outline values and goals, provide infrastructure, staffing and philosophy.

Applicant: understand the organisation’s goals and how to contribute.

2. Description of job-related tasks & personal specification

Organisation: list job-specific tasks and required skills; list specific academic or coaching knowledge and software competencies; emphasise evidence-informed processes and the need to understand feedback and learning strategies.

Applicant: gain clarity on role tasks and responsibilities; highlight relevant experiences in application and determine their fit. Identify areas for personal and professional growth.

3. Salary & renumeration

Organisation: clearly present salary bands and rewards.

Applicant: assess job value and potential rewards.

4. Opportunity for advancement

Organisation: detail career progression and CPD activities.

Applicant: make informed decisions about career path within the organisation; consider your long-term aspirations.

Ensuring value capture in applied performance analysis

Martin and her colleagues have conducted research into value capture in performance analysis and alighted on three key questions:

What? Organisational capability to generate, curate and translate data to co-create knowledge and insight.

How? Skills and contextual intelligence allow practitioners to embed effectively in the performance ecosystem.

Why? These lead to what Martin calls the ‘lightbulb moments’ – where value is added to decision-making processes and contributes to performance.

The ‘Lighthouse Model’ for practice

Martin explored her ‘Lighthouse Model’, which seeks to showcase the ‘how’ (the base of the lighthouse) and the ‘what’ (the tower). As you reach the top, the ‘light’ emphasises the learning opportunities derived from understanding and better-informed judgements.

“Developing a Framework for Professional Practice in Applied Performance Analysis”

😎Very proud to see the capstone project from my PhD published this morning.

👉We define the role of an Applied PA, the components of practice and the expertise which underpins this pic.twitter.com/32vMGSYxN7

— Denise Martin (@deniseanalysis) July 26, 2021

To do the ‘what’, you need to establish the ‘how’, which includes:

• Contextual awareness
• Building relationships
• Performance analysis and sport expertise
• Technical expertise
• Professional behaviours

Martin emphasised contextual awareness i.e. what is needed from your environment to then have an impact on athletes, coaches and executives – those you are trying to create the ‘lightbulb’ moments for.

The following are cornerstones for the ‘what’:

• Establish relationship and define roles
• Needs analysis and service planning
• System design
• Data collection and reliability checking
• Data management
• Analysis
• Report to coaching team
• Facilitation of feedback

Gaps and opportunities: how do you get the lightbulb to shine?

• Identify learning opportunities: there is a lack of knowledge and guidance on how to best design learning opportunities and environments in sport.
• Develop a ‘service mindset’: there is too little service review and evaluation, which limits value capture.
• Find ways to showcase ROI: seek ways to better develop the profession in the eyes of both practitioners and those leading performance departments.

By Aaron Walsh

In recent years, there has been a focus on the mind’s crucial role in achieving peak performance.

It is almost impossible to listen to an interview with or watch a documentary about successful individuals and teams and not hear them refer to the role of mental skills and their significant impact on performance.

As this awareness has grown, we have seen roles created and resources dedicated to help drive and support this vital work.

But is this upswell in demand being translated into effective work? I was curious and began to ask other mental performance coaches I knew and enjoyed some valuable interactions.

From these conversations, something quite clear and surprising emerged: though the work had been normalised, it needed to be integrated better, and as a result, the impact that both these coaches and the teams they were engaged with was not occurring to the level they hoped.

This graphic from the 2016 Rio Olympics captures this perfectly:

Image: Aaron Walsh

I wanted to understand the perceived gap between value and impact and embarked on a research project, which I’ll discuss throughout this series.

Each article will build upon the next. Here, I will define my approach to mental skills; the second will examine the need to have a framework in place for delivery; the third will capture the content that needs to be in place; the fourth will address the actual delivery of the work; and the final instalment will help you to find the right person for your team.

The mental side of performance is not 90 per cent, but it’s not insignificant either

Where does the mental side sit within a team’s overall performance?

Many coaches and athletes say it is 90 per cent but I think the real figure is much lower and, in my view, we need to correct this discrepancy because it significantly shapes the work at hand.

To compete at the highest level, your athletes must be physically capable, possess the necessary skill level, and have an effective game plan. We can measure this for most teams and benchmark ourselves against the best we play against. Sports science as well as game film and analysis give us tremendous insight into this; and we can track the growth of our teams. You can’t outthink a lousy body, lack of skill and poor strategy.

However, when everything is equal, a mysterious performance aspect relates to your ability to deliver your best when it matters the most. It’s hard to measure and quantify at times, but we all know it makes a difference.

In the insanely competitive world of high performance, the mental aspect is a competitive advantage, and if you are not investing in it, you are leaving performance on the table.

My research

I contacted 35 head coaches and performance directors and asked three questions.

The first two were yes/no questions:

Do you think mental skills play an important role in the overall performance of your team?

Do you currently have a strategy to integrate this work into your team environment?

As you can imagine, 100 per cent answered ‘yes’ to the first question, but only four (11 per cent) answered ‘yes’ to the second question.

The responses I received showed that mental skills were acknowledged as necessary, yet integrating this work effectively remains challenging for many teams.

The last question was open-ended, and I wanted to know what prevented these teams from integrating this crucial work:

What major obstacles prevent mental skills from being integrated into your team?

From this question, four major themes emerged:

1. Lack of support from key stakeholders.
2. The work often became siloed.
3. The provider did not understand the demands of the environment.
4. The information presented was often too complex and not relevant to the needs of the athletes.

The research also revealed two critical realities:

1. Most teams don’t know where to begin

Most organisations and teams, though genuine in their desire to equip their teams with mental support, did not know where to begin.

When a team did engage with a potential provider, the nature of that work was often unclear. The work could become random, misaligned, and therefore ineffective.  As a result, the provider frequently felt siloed and isolated and usually lacked alignment with the core messages of others in the environment.

Alongside this, the lack of understanding, support and buy-in from key stakeholders (coaches, players, and support staff) created confusion about what the provider was there to do; in some cases, their role was reduced to fixing underperforming athletes, far from an ideal model and approach.

2. A lack of clear application

Secondly, a provider who engaged with a team without integration felt a lack of connection to the needs within the environment. This meant the information they presented to the team was only sometimes relevant. The theories were acceptable, but the ability to translate them into simple information for the athletes to apply was lacking. The failure to integrate meant providers, at times, were throwing darts at a board and hoping they’d hit the bullseye.

The research raised an important question: how can we integrate this work more effectively? After all, teams value the work but are unsure how it fits within their setting.

To better understand the challenges facing most teams, it is worth exploring the five broad approaches to mental skills services:

1. No program

Recognition of the need is almost universal, but knowing how to address it is challenging. Some teams struggled to find the right person, to have a model that fits their needs or to have a budget to invest in mental skills. They would often conclude that no program is better than one without clarity, intent, and appropriate resources. They are right.

2. The Minimalist approach

Someone engages with the environment intermittently. They may do a few workshops. The workshops may be helpful, but they must be more strategic and embedded into the environment with follow-up for impact to occur.

The danger with this approach is that it stirs up the possibility of growing in the mental side of performance but does not effectively answer the need.

What this looks like: someone in the environment 3-4 times a year for 1-2 days

3. The Deficit approach

This is the most common approach for teams who have begun some work. Mental skills are presented as something that is reserved for players/ teams that are struggling. This approach further drives the negative stigma associated with the mental side.

With this model, mental space can quickly become a performance scapegoat. If the team does not perform, it’s a mental issue, but the ability to address it and grow can’t occur with a deficit approach.

What this looks like: someone in the environment a few hours a week or when needs arise

4. The Skill approach

A skill-based approach is when a team sees mental skills as something everyone needs to work on. The scope of the work consists of the team’s general mindset, providing tools to help people grow, and doing a lot of one-on-one work.

The result, however, can still be siloed from the rest of the coaching team; it is still person-dependent rather than program-dependent. Rather than having a strategy and model that shapes the provider’s work, the work relies on a person to come into a context and decide what needs to occur.

What this looks like: someone in the environment 2-3 days a week or on important tours/ fixtures etc.

5. The Integrated approach

This is the optimal scenario and most immersed model. There is a clear strategy that everyone agrees on, buys into, and drives. Mental skills are a critical pillar of performance, and financial resources and time reflect this. They work across the whole team. The focus areas would be coaching performance, coaching the other coaches, coaching the way culture is developed and lived, and coaching the leaders in the environment.

What this looks like: they are fully integrated into the team and viewed as critical to success as a skilled coach. They are part of the environment regularly, have genuine input, and are seen as a valuable resource.

Questions to ask yourselves:

• Does your team currently have a mental performance strategy?
• What approach best suits your team and meets the mental demands it faces?
• Are you setting up your providers to be successful and have an impact?

Aaron Walsh is performance coach and consultant. He is currently the Mental Skills Coach for Chiefs Rugby in New Zealand and Scotland Rugby. If you would like to speak to him, please contact a member of the Leaders Performance Institute team.

By Esther Goldsmith and Dr Natalie Brown

We know that females are different to males, and that we need to take that into account when working with female athletes – but what does this really mean in practice?

As we mentioned previously, there is a lot of myths and confusion about what you should or shouldn’t be doing as a practitioner or coach in sport when working with females. Unfortunately, similar to all sports science practices, there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. Every athlete that you work with is going to be different, and female athletes are no exception. In fact, when it comes to menstrual cycles, we know that this increases variation as every individual will have a different experience of their menstrual cycle, and this might even change from cycle to cycle.

At Sport Wales we work internally and externally to ensure that every female athlete in Wales can access support when it comes to female athlete health. However, this looks different depending on the context.. We have a dedicated team of practitioners who work together to provide a multidisciplinary approach to support female health and performance. As a team, we have four aims:

1. Enhance knowledge and awareness
2. Establish open and supportive environments
3. Embed positive behaviours
4. Equip with solutions and management strategies

Whilst menstrual cycles have previously been a big focus of research and delivery at Sport Wales, we also appreciate that this isn’t the only area that female athletes need support in! Pelvic health, pregnancy, breast support, female puberty, menopause and RED-S [relative energy deficiency in sport] are areas that we have expertise around and are working with sports to consider. We also make sure that female-specific factors are considered across all practitioner disciplines, and collaborate with other teams in Sport Wales, such as the coaching team, for consistency and a whole organisation approach.

Female-specific factors do not have to be standalone or demand a lot of time and resource. Instead, we promote integrating and embedding into ongoing work to support the individual athlete. Some good examples of this might be:

• A nutritionist considering menstrual cycle symptoms alongside their nutrition advice (a female athlete may experience premenstrual nausea that means she finds it hard to fuel)
• An S&C coach factoring in menstrual cycle phase to physical testing notes for an individual who experiences considerable fatigue during her period to account for any changes in testing results

Another approach focusses on providing education to athletes and sharing the importance of considering and talking about the menstrual cycle. The menstrual cycle has been, and still often is, a taboo or topic that isn’t often discussed, the first step to working with female athletes is to help them feel comfortable talking about periods!

This is even more of a challenge when talking about pelvic floor health and stress incontinence. We encourage female athletes to track their own menstrual cycle so that female athletes understand what their cycle means for themselves; what symptoms they experience, how that relates to training and competition and how to manage or reduce symptoms. In addition, we help support female athletes to understand the importance of having a regular menstrual cycle and when to seek help if periods become irregular or symptoms are severe. Tracking can also be a useful starting point to initiate conversations about female health.

We also work with coaches and support staff to educate them about the menstrual cycle; we have created four online e-modules that any sport and practitioner across Wales can access. Whilst education for athletes, coaches and practitioners helps improve their knowledge which we know can help everyone feel more confident to have conversations, we also provide education and support on ‘how’ and ‘what to do next’ to encourage conversations and support to be translated into practice.

From a behaviour change perspective, education and training are two possible interventions. However, enablement and environmental restructuring are additional interventions and approaches we take to support female health and performance.  For example, helping sports contemplate the environment they provide and whether it is set up for a menstruating athlete (e.g. are there period products available during camps?).

Over the last five years, there has been a lot of progress internally amongst the practitioner team at Sport Wales to better support female athletes in Wales. We have worked hard on:

• Increasing normalised conversations related to female health internally and externally
• Engaging sports around female-specific monitoring (and facilitating this)
• Challenging practitioners to consider sport science and medicine support through a female athlete and health lens
• Building trust with athletes to talk about female-specific topics
• Creating an open culture where people are receptive to learning and asking questions

Embedding female health support into practice does not have to be complicated or require additional time and resource – it should not be an ‘extra thing’. It is important to support the individual athlete, and female-specific considerations should be incorporated into this as normal practice. A huge amount of support can be provided through open conversations and environments between the athlete, coaches and practitioners.

In our next article we will explore conversations with female athletes in more detail.

By John Portch

When the Leaders Performance Institute asks Vignesh Jayanth what tool would enable him to do his job better, his answer is both light-hearted and instructive.

“I’d like a robot that could do my job and I just tell it what to do,” says the Head of Sporting Insights at AS Monaco with a laugh.

Time, resource and support are precious commodities for data analysts. They can only be earned through trust and belief in the value of the insights they provide.

“Data can help to make decisions, set directions and add value to people’s opinions,” Jayanth continues, “and it’s also there to ask the right questions. The important thing is to create a holistic picture to help a player or coach understand what they’re doing and why they should be doing it.

“Numbers sometimes speak louder than simply saying things.”

But what makes those numbers the right numbers? With Jayanth’s help, we explore how your analysis team can turn insights into a critical performance edge.

For better integration consider: is your insight ‘great-to-know’ or ‘good-to-know’?

How integrated is data analysis within your multidisciplinary work? If you struggle you’re not alone; it is arguably the analyst’s most enduring challenge. Where it exists, integrated analysis can provide insights that will inform decision-making, both for the match at the weekend and looking further ahead.

But it’s often tricky to reach that point. “Maybe overtime you gain that sort of trust, but in football, it’s quite hard because there can be lot of turnover,” says Jayanth of European football in general.

How can the analyst better help themselves in a volatile world? A clear data strategy with the right support structure helps but, too often, data analysts struggle when making the distinction between what Jayanth terms “great-to-know” (“something that could influence the next few games or the next two to three months”) and “good-to-know” (“something that could influence future practice”).

“Analysts get pulled into the tendency of everyone putting their heads down and working towards the weekend ahead,” he continues. “It’s always nice to take a step back and look at things from a global perspective.” Indeed, you should reiterate those good-to-knows occasionally. The frequency may depend on whether or not you are running data analysis from your academy through to your senior team or whether you are part of a wider team quietly running models in the background.

Take athletes and coaches through a ‘process of realisation’

Data must be relevant and consumable at the right times. The data, in Jayanth’s case, needs to be football-relevant and, ideally, will be “encapsulated in one or two points.”

There is what he calls a “process of realisation” for coaches and performance staff. He says: “What I’ve learned over time is it’s better to ask questions with information that you have and then the coach can try to understand what’s needed by themselves. It has to be a process of realisation because no-one wants to be told what to do”.

As a coach begins to make their decision, they might also bring other members of staff into the conversation. “Eventually, it’s like a circle where you say ‘I found something interesting, what do you think?’ and then the coach gives you their perspective, which could be completely different from what you’ve been thinking about.”

Such a difference in opinion is not necessarily a bad thing, even when pursuing coach or athlete buy-in. “It helps you, once you build that relationship, to go back and analyse elements for the future; and you can always bring back this conversation and say ‘this is what you mentioned, this is what I took away, and this is what we analysed’.”

Here, Jayanth’s advice for analysts is simple. “Know your audience,” he says. “Know exactly what their role is and what they are doing and eventually see how you could give them an impactful suggestion or an impactful way of making yourself more useful.”

‘No-one cares how, they just want it done – so prioritise’

As a data analyst, what is the key to working under pressure? “Prioritising helps,” says Jayanth, referring back to the great-to-know versus good-to-know balance. “It also depends on how you’re structured as an organisation”, he adds, alluding to the fact that no two clubs are the same.

Moreover, if the performance team comes to you with a request that sidelines your current projects, it is an opportunity to strengthen the standing of your work.

“The idea is to be able to communicate clearly and find a solution at that point, so if there’s something that breaks down in the process, you can just tell them ‘OK, let’s find another way’ and continue to include them in that process; but ultimately no-one cares how it’s done, they just want it done, so prioritising really helps.”

To wrap up, the Leaders Performance Institute asks Jayanth for one mistake he’s made that other analysts should avoid. “I would say finding the right place to speak to someone at the right time and then picking your battles.”

Main photo: Watford FC/Alan Cozzi

By John Portch

There is rarely people lining up to praise the English weather, but the coaches and performance staff of Watford, West Bromwich Albion and Sheffield Wednesday have their reasons.

The three Championship clubs held pre-season training camps at St George’s Park in July when a number of their counterparts were visiting foreign climes.

“You can guarantee that the weather isn’t going to impact training loads,” says Watford Head Coach Tom Cleverley, who took his side to SGP between 22 and 27 July. “Sometimes you can go to Spain, Portugal and it’s too hot to get the intensities that you want.”

It was the week of pre-season where Watford started their out-of-possession work and intensity was a must. “You can’t be intense the whole pre-season because you’ll burn them out,” Cleverley tells the Leaders Performance Institute, “but for one week of pre-season, we identified that week where we could work twice a day on the pitch; we could have a meeting every day in the morning about what we’re going after; and then a meeting in the evening about a target that we’ll set for the season.”

Tony Strudwick is of a similar mindset, as he tells the Leaders Performance Institute of SGP. “We’re guaranteed a consistent weather pattern,” says West Brom’s Director of Medical. “We want to try to create that level of consistency in pre-season.”

The 330-acre Staffordshire facility, which includes a Hilton Hotel, boasts 14 state-of-the-art football pitches, which can be configured for a variety of sports, as well as a range of indoor facilities including a full 3G pitch, a multifunctional sports hall, gym, hydrotherapy pools and a cryotherapy chamber. It suited West Brom to a tee. “The one-site solution is perfect for us,” Strudwick adds.

West Brom spent 13 to 20 July at SGP – hot on the tails of Sheffield Wednesday, whose camp took place between 8 and 13 July.

“You literally come off the training pitch, you’re into recovery, lunch, you can maybe get your feet up for an hour or two and be ready for the next session and then it’s the same in the morning,” Neil Thompson, the Assistant Manager at Sheffield Wednesday, tells the Leaders Performance Institute.

Here, we explore three clubs with five similar reasons for choosing SGP for part of their pre-season work.

1. An escape from monotony

Monotony was a big issue for Championship clubs in an off-season that for those not involved in the play-offs ran from the last day of the 2023-24 season (4 May) to the opening day of the 2024-25 season (10 August).

The gap led to an extended pre-season. “A seven-week pre-season is longer than usual,” says Cleverley, who explains that the club’s own training ground “can become monotonous if you’re doing double sessions every day for seven weeks”. SGP, on the other hand, is “second to none” in his view.

“It can freshen things up a bit and create an impact,” says Strudwick, adding that it allowed West Brom’s own training pitches a further week to recover. “It doesn’t sound like a long time, six or seven weeks, but given that you’re going to be at the training ground for the next 38 weeks, it does make sense to create something unique and special.”

Tom Cleverley, the Head Coach of Watford, explains tactics to his players. (Photo: Watford FC/Alan Cozzi)

2. Enhanced bonding activities

SGP enabled all three teams the opportunity to promote team bonding, which is particularly critical early in pre-season when new players and staff are settling in.

“You’re there and living in each other’s pockets for a week,” says Thompson. “You might speak to an individual who you’ve never spoken to in depth.”

There are nurmeous “breakout areas” around the Hilton too, as Strudwick explains. “There are plenty of opportunities for players and coaches to interact and engage.”

“The team spirit aspect, I really enjoy,” says Cleverley. “So keeping guys together between sessions, they’re not on their digital devices, they’re together in the evenings, they’re eating together, they’re not going straight back to their rooms – they want to be around each other for that week – which really builds something to move forward for the whole season.”

Neil Thompson, the Assistant Manager of Sheffield Wednesday. (Photo: Jacques Feeney/Getty Images) 

3. Increased training opportunities

There is real value in English teams booking camps in southern and central Europe – Sheffield Wednesday also arranged camps in Germany and Austria – but there is something to be said for having everything on hand at one site at a familiar venue. It is instructive that each of Watford, West Brom and Wednesday previously held pre-season camps at SGP.

“I’m keen to go back there,” says Cleverley, who is already onto the Watford team secretary about the idea. “I’ve had a lot of experience of St George’s Park as an international player, as a club player. I’ve played there, done a camp there with Watford, and now, as a coach.”

“We’re looking at doing the same next year,” says Strudwick of West Brom. “We wanted to reduce travel time and maximise the training opportunities. We didn’t have to get on early flights, go through airports, we don’t lose training days, we don’t lose match prep days.

“We’ve had two years of St George’s Park and both experiences have been fantastic.”

The same works in reverse, with overseas teams such as SL Benfica and AS Monaco enjoying similar benefits in the Staffordshire countryside.

4. Complete control for clubs

Not only is there favourable training weather and pitches at SGP (“the ground staff were putting the sprinklers on at the right times,” says Cleverley), but teams have the full ability to tweak schedules as necessary or make adjustments.

Cleverley, for example, split his Watford squad in two midway through their camp in order to play Scottish Premiership side Hibernian in Edinburgh. The fixture was arranged as part of Ryan Porteous’ move from Hibs to Hertfordshire in 2023. “It was a unique week,” says Cleverley, who was still satisfied with the camp’s outcome.

A team’s plans are subject to “constant iteration” in pre-season, as Strudwick explains. He says: “We’ll have certain priorities that we want to hit, we’ll have certain individual players that need managing, and players coming back into the training process. But I’ve been in football long enough now to understand that the plan you have in early May often changes come mid-July.”

He also discusses the challenge of working in an environment where players employ external practitioners, particularly as there is no firm guidance for clubs. In any case, “it means you can’t switch off. You’ve got to be in constant contact with the players and tracking them outside of the season now.”

Darnell Furlong of West Bromwich Albion is all smiles in the gym during his club’s pre-season training camp day two at St George’s Park on July 16, 2024. (Photo: Adam Fradgley/West Bromwich Albion FC via Getty Images) 

5. Behind-closed-doors matches

As pre-season focuses continue to evolve from conditioning to game-based, there is an increasing need to test ideas out on the grass in realistic conditions. With this in mind, the facilities at SGP can be primed for behind-closed-doors matches, which West Brom used to their advantage this summer.

The Baggies’ first two pre-season friendlies, against Bolton Wanderers and Peterborough United, were held onsite. The team played a further two fixtures behind-closed-doors (versus Blackpool and RCD Mallorca) at their West Bromwich Albion Training Ground.

The matches at SGP ticked many performance boxes for Strudwick and his colleagues. “You don’t want to go into your first game and expose the players to a 70,000 crowd,” he says. “You still have your referees but it allows you to be more flexible in playing minutes.” This is not just in terms of minutes per player, but reducing half lengths to 30 minutes, or even extending them to 60. “It gives you a lot more flexibility to nail down what you want from a team perspective.”

By John Portch

A regular menstrual cycle is generally a sign of good health in female athletes – although not all female athletes are necessarily aware of this.

“There are still female athletes who see it as a positive if their periods stop when they’re training,” Dr Natalie Brown, a Research Associate at the Welsh Institute of Performance Science, tells the Leaders Performance Institute on Teams.

“This is because it’s easier and more convenient; they’ve not got to deal with the symptoms or the bleeding.”

Yet the impact on their short and long term health, let alone performance, could be significant. “It’s an indicator that they do not have enough energy for those basic bodily functions.”

Nevertheless, such myths have grown to fill the void left by a lack of education and awareness across sport.

Brown is part of the Sport Wales Female Health & Performance Team who are working to redress that balance by seeking to identify how the Welsh sports system can better support female athletes in their health and performance.

In the first of a series of articles exploring the work of Sport Wales’ Female Health & Performance Team, we discuss some of the major health and performance considerations for female athletes as well as some of the common myths that endure.

Female athletes: long overlooked

It was encouraging to see a 50:50 split between male and female athletes at an Olympic Games for the first time in Paris earlier this year, but the stark reality is that just 22 per cent of leadership positions in sport are held by women.

This is a symptom of a wider gender imbalance. Sport, much like society, has been geared towards males, with female sport often overlooked and under-resourced.

“Females are participating more, and that’s great to see, but the environments in which they are participating have not necessarily been set up for females,” says Esther Goldsmith, who both works alongside Brown within the Female Health & Performance Team and joins her on the call.

A girls’ rugby team, for example, may not have access to suitable changing rooms or toilets. “That means they have to arrive prepared and, if they’ve not got access to toilets, what does that mean if you’ve got someone on her period?” says Brown.

“Even in just focusing on the menstrual cycle you’re ignoring the bigger picture around women’s experiences of sport and how the system that we’ve designed doesn’t enable women to thrive in sport because they’re trying to thrive in a male system.”

She continues: “Girls go through puberty earlier than boys and so they have experienced hormonal changes at a time when they’re very unlikely to have been exposed to a strength stimulus and an appropriate movement at a young age when they would really benefit from it.”

“The other thing is access to physios,” says Goldsmith. “Most female teams don’t have access to a full-time physio, whereas male teams do.” Inevitably, female teams suffer more time lost to injuries than their male peers. “In a male setup you might have a physio input that means that there’s no time loss as a result of a niggle.”

This is compounded by the lack of sports science research on female athletes.

“Females have different biological and physical makeups,” says Goldsmith. “We know our hearts, circulation and hormones are different, our anatomy is different, and therefore our biomechanics are different.”

As long as the performance community overlooks this, from the grassroots to elite level, female athletes will leave both health and performance potential on the table.

Education

The Female Health & Performance Team is focused on trying “to provide practical, tangible things that you can do to support your female athletes without it becoming too complicated or time-consuming to achieve,” as Brown puts it.

Education is a significant lever. “A lot of teams say ‘we need education’ but then they don’t necessarily know how to deliver it,” says Goldsmith. “I will deliver some classes to athletes, coaches and practitioners and work with them to help them take responsibility for themselves.”

Sport Wales is aiming to create a culture where everyone, from board members to volunteers, considers the importance of female health. Goldsmith and her colleagues work with athletes and coaches to address health, wellbeing and performance questions.

It might involve classroom discussions but it could also take in one-to-one sessions. “If you’re working with an athlete there’s a bit of that ‘we’ve got to work on this together’ because every female body is completely different and everyone will respond in a different way,” she adds.

“You’ll go into some sports and work with some female athletes and they’ll respond to or act differently with you to how they might in their day-to-day training environment because you’re external and not part of their setup.”

Goldsmith will also adapt her approach depending on to whom she speaks. “Classes will look different depending on what part of the pathway you’re working on because a 14-year-old is going to respond very differently to a 25-year-old.”

She and her colleagues also strive to go beyond “surface level” initiatives and have carried out behavioural mapping. “How do we actually change behaviour so that females are considered, whether that’s with the athletes themselves or with the coaches and performance directors to look at actionable ideas?”

Myth busting

Around 90 per cent of athletes who menstruate report some symptoms including pain, reduced motivation and fatigue. Brown uses this stat to set the scene for an illuminating story: “I once asked an athlete if their menstrual cycle affects their training and they said: ‘no, not at all. I just miss training if I’m really struggling’. I just had to sit there and say ‘OK, we’re going to have to take a step back here’.”

Brown and her colleagues routinely dispel common misunderstandings and myths.

One such myth is the supposed need to periodise training according to an athlete’s menstrual cycle. “There is inconsistent evidence  that you should completely adjust all of your training based on phases of the menstrual cycle,” she says.

Media headlines suggesting links between ACL injuries and the menstrual cycle have not helped. “I’ve worked with some athletes who are petrified of training in a certain way at a certain time because of those headlines and their anxiety,” says Goldsmith. Another persistent myth is the idea that stopping the use of hormonal contraceptives will restart someone’s cycle (they may experience a withdrawal bleed, which is not the same as a menstrual bleed).

Coaches are just as susceptible to these myths. “You could see them, especially with team sports, asking ‘well, if I’ve got two athletes in that phase and two athletes in that phase and 20 in that phase, how do I make sure that they’re all training based on their phases?’” All are relieved to hear there is an alternative solution to providing female-specific support.

One might also assume that a female coach would be more sympathetic to the needs of a female athlete but that is not always the case. “Some female coaches or practitioners, for example, never had any menstrual symptoms,” says Brown. “Some of them therefore don’t have the automatic motivation to consider it, and sometimes both male and female coaches can perceive athletes as using their symptoms as an excuse.”

It is important that it is not just females either, particularly as the majority of coaches are male. Some have a wealth of knowledge in the area, others don’t. “If you ask male coaches if they think there should be equal opportunities for males and females they wouldn’t say ‘no’,” says Goldsmith. “But that doesn’t mean they’ve factored some of the things we’ve talked about into their practice. They just haven’t developed that understanding. But when you start communicating it as a performance thing, they’re like ‘OK, this applies to the world I live in’.”

To further help athletes, as well as their GPs, Sport Wales Medical Consultant, Dr Katy Guy, has prepared a letter that female athletes can take to their GPs if they were to notice a change in their menstrual cycle. “We know GPs are under the cosh and have a lot to think and know about, so we’re just trying to create a resource to help bust that myth beyond our institute,” says Goldsmith.

For all the obstacles that remain, both Brown and Goldsmith are optimistic.

“In the last two years there’s been quite a shift,” says Brown. “Before that, the conversation was starting and there was some awareness but it was more around what was not being provided. There’s been an increase in both research and support in the last two years.

“The increased visibility of women’s sport has also supported that shift. So rather than us saying ‘this is important, you need to consider it, this is why’, I feel like we’ve shifted towards sports, athletes and coaches saying ‘we know it’s important. What can we do?’”

Stay tuned for upcoming articles where Brown and Goldsmith provide practical suggestions and solutions for supporting female athletes, from enhancing knowledge and establishing supportive environments to embedding positive behaviours and suitable management strategies.

Further reading:

‘Female-Specific Considerations Should Be Part of Normal Practice’

By Luke Whitworth

Let’s begin this month’s Debrief with a question.

How many meetings did you attend in September and how many of those meetings were useful or productive?

On second thoughts, you may want to keep your counsel on that front. If you do happen to feel that your meetings were, let’s say, sub-optimal, you’re not alone.

A 2017 report in the Harvard Business Review laid out some stark facts that ring just as true today:

• 71 % of senior managers believe meetings are inefficient.
• 40% of employees consider unproductive meetings to be the highest cost to their organisations.
• 50% of all meeting time is found to be effective, well used and engaging. This percentage is even lower for remote meetings.

All were discussed in a recent Leadership Skills Series session, which kicks off the September Debrief, before segueing into performance analysis.

Before we get into it, we want to thank those of you who completed our Future Trends in High Performance survey. We’re excited to dissect the findings and begin condensing this into a report which we hope you will find valuable – keep your eyes peeled for this later in the year.

Making your meetings more impactful

Let’s cut to the chase: what we can we be doing practically to make our meetings better? We set out some simple but actionable tactics to deploy right away in our September Leadership Skills Series session.

Before the meeting :

• Ask at the outset, is a meeting actually required for this particular item? Too often we see meetings happen for meetings’ sake. Be diligent and reflective of the purpose and desired outcome.
• If it is agreed that meeting would be useful, clearly define the purpose of the meeting before bringing the relevant people together and create an agenda with those involved. Is the purpose to make a decision? Is the purpose to brainstorm or solve a problem? On the whole, what is it and is everyone clear?
• Create an agenda. This sounds simple but it’s important as many meetings skip this part, which can often derail the quality of the discussions. Start and finish on time. Consider allocating time for items so ‘less is more’ and identify a specific aim for each to give direction – what specifically do we need to take away from this agenda item?
• Identify the required resources and pre-reading required for the meeting or each agenda item.
• Instead of inviting everyone, who do we want in the room who is going to enable the decision or enable the best thinking?
• Assign roles: a chair or facilitator? Who is leading each topic and who is the note taker? Often what happens is the expert or leader of the team ends up defaulting to the chair and facilitator. Look to vary this to bring fresh voices in.

During the meeting:

• Start well. Start with positivity and be mindful of your body language and the impression you’re creating, as we know about the emotional contagion this can create.
• The chair or facilitator should look to set out the ground rules from the outset, do this nice and early: share what the plan is, that there will be equal opportunity, expect interruption if the direction of travel isn’t where it needs to be, and be rigorous, especially around timings.
• Check for buy-in and permission at the beginning of the meeting to stick to the above as this takes away some people feeling a bit nervous about coming in and stopping the conversation or moving it on.
• Consider ‘mini diamonds’. Each agenda item becomes a mini diamond. At the top of the diamond, you look to open up the conversation and bring different people in and then the chair or facilitator needs to bring it to the end point. What were the actions and ideas that came out of the conversation?

After the meeting:

• This is where meetings can lose their impact. A really good discussion is had, there are some actions that come out of it, but by the time we actually get the notes from it, the momentum has been lost.
• In an ideal world, the note taker has some time immediately after the meeting where the notes can be summarised and circulated.
• Ensure all actions have a specific person – not a department – assigned to them.
• Ask for feedback. If you haven’t gone out to your teams or the organisation to review what people think of meetings recently, how effectively they’re being used, what’s working and what isn’t working, it’s perhaps an idea to do that.

Mobilising performance analysis: solutions for common challenges

In last month’s debrief, we touched on some of the learnings and reflections from part one of our series titled Advances in Performance Analysis. As part of that first session, we asked attendees to reflect on some of the common challenges they are facing in the space. As a refresher, these were:

1. Integration: efficiently setting up datasets that allow for different data points to intertwine with one another.
2. Communication of the data: consider: how good are you at data visualisation and storytelling?
3. Buy-in: how strong is the understanding around the value of performance analysis across the organisation to show return on investment? How well are you showing and measuring the impact?
4. Data management: given the amount of metrics being collected, is there clarity and prioritisation of what matters?

The aim of session two, was to explore these challenges in more detail and, by leaning into a couple of case studies from different environments, share some ideas and solutions to shift the dial. Those case studies were provided by the UK Sports Institute’s Head of Performance Analysis, Julia Wells, and Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Head of Performance Insights & Data Strategy, Mat Pearson. Both shared some useful ideas.

Integrating and connecting data

• Focus on data skill development. This means upskilling the relevant staff involved, from the right data, correct formats and in the right places, before the interrogation and analysis even begins. Go back to basics and upskill everyone in the team.
• Structures can support this too. There is clear data strategy and leadership within the UKSI environment, all geared towards supporting performance planning. Roles such as Data & Insight Lead and Performance Data Lead are embedded within the organisation to help those leading programmes with the direction and the integration of their data.
• Do not underestimate the importance of clear strategy as part of your performance planning. Know what needs collating and why within your team.

Data collation

• Taking the time to pause and critically reflect is really important in the process as it can be very easy to stay on the hamster wheel and just keep collecting.
• Ask quality questions: why are we creating the data, what is its purpose, what decisions is it informing, particularly in the coaching process? Do this periodically and continue to plan, do and review.
• Engage in conversations with key leaders in the environment to discuss what to start, continue and stop. It’s important to intentionally carve out those opportunities as part of your performance planning.

Communication of data

• Communication is a critical skill. Wells suggested that some people would say that communication is a non-technical skill, but it is highly technical, in her opinion. Therefore, it is really important to upskill those working in this space considering the critical nature of human engagement in the process.
• At the UKSI, staff work closely with the psychology team to help elevate understanding of self and others. If we can better understand the people we work with, it will support how to get the best out of each other. They’ve tapped into better understanding one another’s preferences to be more impactful in how they support each other.

Buy-in

• Alignment to the sport’s strategy helps to provide a clearer connection. If this alignment and connection isn’t there, you’ll naturally get disconnection so it will be more challenging to get the buy-in.
• Relationships are key. Invite key stakeholders and leaders into your world and shadow them. When they immerse themselves to better understand the process you’ll find that it can quickly lead to them becoming a voice for you in wider conversations.

Data literacy

This is a bonus challenge and set of solutions, which does have some relevance to communication and buy-in.

• Often practitioners can suffer in silence when looking for solutions. In the latest Olympic cycle, the team at UKSI have introduced an internal online data community that provides access to resources. This accessibility allowed them to be able to connect with others in the network and share good practice.
• The UKSI team put together a Data Leadership Programme which was focused on pulling together the data leaders in their sports to look at opportunities, challenges and future direction. Courses and best practices, called ‘Data Camp’, ‘Project Automate’ and ‘Code School’, were created to improve skills and processes for coaches and practitioners to help them be more efficient.