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Cumberlands’ Commitment to Coach Development
The University of the Cumberlands is deeply committed to the all-round development of its student-athletes. That commitment compelled a multidisciplinary team from within the University to design and deliver a professional development workshop for 36 of its coaches.
Accountability Key to Championship Form
After a stellar playing career that included 4 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances, Kristi Stefanoni, Head Coach of the UMass Softball Program, has solidified her position as a stellar coach with another successful year and being rewarded with the title of 2018 Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year.
Excellence in Sport Industry Collaborations
Writing ranked #1 in the world next to your name is a rare honor. Writing it 2 years in a row means that you understand how to get it right, you’re an innovator and you stay at the forefront of your field. Loughborough University, the #1 University in the World for Sports Related Subjects, gets teaching the business of sport right.
How Happiness Affects Athletes
A 75 year-long Harvard study reveals that authentic, honest and reliable relationships are the source of happiness, physical and mental health. In a TED Talk on the study, one of the longest continuous studies of adult development in the world, Director, Robert Waldinger’s discusses the findings and the popular talk has recorded some 13 million views. In this article we speak to Athlete Assessments’ Senior Consultant, Bo Hanson, about what these important findings mean for athletes, teams and coaches.
What to Look for in Losses
I was listening to a podcast with a successful Australian cyclist who had won an incredible 11 world titles, but, it wasn’t these titles that shaped her as a competitor, it was the 29 world titles that she contested and lost.
Google’s Management Tips Translated to Coaching
Google, the #1 search engine in the world, ranked the top 10 attributes common to its best managers. We found that those behaviors run parallel to characteristics displayed by the most successful leaders in sport. Google’s findings support our knowledge that the best in the world reach that rank because of their expertise in people management, not just technology, equipment or physical capabilities.
Athlete Assessments’ Team Day
Every team needs to set aside time to re-connect, review goals and revisit values. Athlete Assessments is no different. We have four Team Days a year and the first one for 2019 saw us rock climbing, getting to know each other a little better from a DISC perspective and making some tough “Decisions” over a lunch menu!
Engagement & Excellence in Sport and Recreation Management
The team at Texas A&M University-Commerce encourage engagement, energy and work ethic in all of their Health and Human Performance students. Faculty work together to deliver exceptional outcomes, making an immediate impact on students’ lives and their professional careers. In this article we talk to Dr Clay Bolton and Dr Anthony Rosselli about their curriculum, students, internships and building those all-important networks.
Olympic Mental Challenges – Insights from Dr Nicole Detling
Mental Performance Coach, Dr Nicole Detling, is distinguished by her ability to cultivate exceptional progress in her athletes. Professionally, she was a fundamental part of Team USA’s incredibly successful campaigns at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, 2014 Sochi Olympics and the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang. She worked with the US Speed Skating and Freestyle Aerial Ski Teams as well as the Snowboarding team for PyeongChang. Over 2 decades she’s developed a unique insight into the pressures associated with Olympic performance, how to work through them and lay the foundations for success.
Conflict Management, Team Culture and High-Performance Sport
Josh Gordon relishes the opportunity to resolve fractious conflicts or situations engulfed by ineffective cultures. He’s a conflict management specialist, founder of the Sports Conflict Institute, and co-author of essential reading, The Sport’s Playbook: Building Teams That Outperform, Year After Year.
Coaches, Don’t Let Your Athletes Miss This In Their Training Journals
We’ve all heard about the importance of athletes keeping training journals to improve performance, and like all valuable performance strategies it isn’t whether or not our athletes know about it, but whether they do it. Bo Hanson, Senior Consultant at Athlete Assessments says, “a training journal is one of the first activities we encourage athletes to do. The kind of things we like to see in a training journal include; the way an athlete feels about the session, any mental, physical or technical challenges they identify, things they want to improve on, things they were coached to improve on, strategies they tried and the values they lived on the team that practice.”
University of Louisiana Athletics Leading the Way
When you visit University of Louisiana’s campus and see the new athletic facilities, a testament to the University’s investment in recent years, you’d understandably be impressed with their focus on the physical side of development. But, you would be misled. What you quickly learn, when you dig a little deeper, is that they are committed to a holistic approach to development across the entire Athletic Department.
Results | Evidence | Impact – Mental Performance Consultant in Action
The dynamic and innovative Mental Performance Consultant, Dr Tiffany Jones gets results. Her portfolio of winning clients evidences her impact. The mental skills dynamo teaches strategies which immediately influence a team’s score line and through this article we’ll create a window into her work.
Game Changing Consultant – Sandra Chu
Sandra Chu, High-Performance Consultant, Princeton Graduate, Director of Two Tigers Consulting, successful Collegiate Rowing Coach, is a proven game changer. In any sport, in any field, her commitment to excellence, ability to analyze the obstacles, develop strategies and institute changes, transforms lives and fundamentally the ability and performance of teams.
Answer to THE Coaching Question
What’s the difference between super champions, champions and athletes who don’t quite make it? It’s the quintessential coaching question and in this article we’ll recap the research findings that reveal the answers and tell you everything you need to know to apply the academic knowledge to everyday coaching.
Momentary Vs Sustained Adaptations – What this means in Elite Sport
very athlete has a way of doing things that just feels right. A way they like to shoot, or move, or run. Like writing with your dominant hand, it’s comfortable and not in any way forced. That’s what a ‘natural profile’ or ‘natural style’ in the AthleteDISC Profile is, it’s the way you prefer to do things.
When an athlete is able to compete according to this natural style, rather than continually making significant adaptations, they perform at their best. They’re not using any extra energy to do something that doesn’t come naturally.
Domino Effect in Sport
Many believe in the ‘domino effect’ as a natural force in life and subsequently, sport. It’s often referred to as the concept of ‘momentum’. The domino effect is best explained as looking at life, or sport, as a series of somehow connected events or situations. When one domino is pushed, the others all fall until the inevitable end result occurs and a thousand dominos are all lying flat.
The Pressure of Perfectionism
How the pressure of perfectionism can be alleviated by coaching strategies that focus on effort not execution, beliefs and behavior
By Bo Hanson, Director and Lead Consultant – Athlete Assessments
‘The Rise of Perfectionism’ among college students is a significant trend according to an article by the Harvard Business Review. In summary, the article was reporting on research conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO), which surveyed 41,641 American, Canadian, and British college students from 1989 to 2016 and found an increasing tendency to
Elite Sports Camps – Include the Skills that Really Need Work
Camp can be a pivotal time for young athletes, they are exposed to new ideas, techniques, facilities, coaches and competition strategies. Equally, sports camps present the best coaches with an outstanding opportunity to work on an athlete’s people skills and strengthen their performance potential, alongside the usual physical and technical focus.
Collaborative Development at the Coaches Club
In May 2018, Athlete Assessments launched its exclusive Coaches Club, a masterclass for coaches working in high-performance sport. The series of three 1-hour sessions focus on the most relevant topics in high-performance sport today and most importantly how to address them. With three of the four programs sold out, Athlete Assessments released new dates for Coaches Club #5 that runs in July 2018.
Team Building Skills in Demand by Employers (not just in Sport!)
Team building tops the list of non-technical attributes employers are looking for in college graduates, according to a recent survey by the NACE Centre For Career Development and Talent Acquisition. Communication and leadership skills also feature in the top five.
Self-knowledge Creates Career Opportunity
Chris McDonell graduated Saint Mary’s College of California with a B.A. in Politics and a minor in Spanish, but when it came to the interview process for a career in California’s Police Force, Chris’s superiors and interviewers thought one of his greatest strengths was his self-knowledge.
Looking Beyond Skill and Talent
The movement towards “looking beyond skill and talent” must be backed by all Coaches who want to develop a concrete set of behavioral and non-technical criteria that support their team while they reach for their goals. Each Coach looks for something different in their athletes and in this article we look at the advice Mel Downer of Basketball Queensland, Australia gives to emerging athletes.
Roadblocks to Accountability
In a revealing interview with Dr. Jen Fraser, for End Bullying & Abuse in Sports Summit, Bo Hanson 3 x Olympic medalist and 4 x Olympian explains why a Coach’s bullying tactics will not create a pathway for personal growth, long-term results, mental skills or mental toughness.
Short-Term Goals Bring Success in Sport
I really enjoy the teamwork in hockey – indoor, ice and field. Well differentiated roles and so many different theories on positional play, attack and defense. Recently, I watched a field hockey team win a national championship and their playing strategy was a great example of just how effective a focus on short-term goals can be.
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