The sport coach

Chapter Objectives After completing this chapter you should be able to: 1. Understand some of the core differences between coaching requirements in participation and performance domains. 2. Discuss diverse models of sports coaching and how these differ in terms of their emphasis, strengths, and limitations. 3. Describe a range of key factors which impact on the coaching process and how these can be integrated through a focus on professional judgment and decision making. 4. Describe some crucial skills that can help coaches to understand and manage the complex and dynamic environments in which they work and best lead performers

Illuminating and applying “The Dark Side”: Insights from elite team leaders

In contrast to socially desirable behaviors, recent work has suggested that effective elite team leadership also relies on socially undesirable behaviors. Accordingly, this study aimed to further explore the authenticity of dark side leadership behaviors, what they look like, and how they may be best used. Via interviews with 15 leaders, behaviors associated with Machiavellianism/mischievousness, skepticism, social dominance, and performance-focused ruthlessness were found. Moreover, these behaviors were enabled by leaders’ sociopolitical awareness and engineering as well as their adaptive expertise. Findings promote practitioner sensitivity to dark side leadership and, for leader effectiveness, sociopolitical and temporal features of its application

The P7 approach to the Olympic challenge: Sharing a practical framework for mission preparation and execution

The Olympic Games represent the biggest and third biggest sporting occasions in the world (Summer and Winter respectively). As such, dealing with the various challenges and optimizing performance at this event has been an important dual focus for team leaders, coaches, performers, and their supporting sport psychologists. In this paper, we share an organizational approach to planning and preparation that, in our experience, provides an effective setup for athletes, coaches, and support teams alike. Specifically, this presented framework enables the focused tasking of support staff and resources to address both individual and specific challenges. To illuminate the route via which this approach delivers its impact, underpinning mechanisms, advantages, and other considerations are also presented

Mental skills training in sprinting

The Science of Sport: Sprinting examines the scientific principles that underpin the preparation and performance of athletics at all levels, from grassroots to Olympic competition. Drawing on the expertise of some of the world's leading coaches and sport science professionals, the book presents a detailed analysis of the latest evidence and explores the ways in which science has influenced, and subsequently improved, the sport of sprinting. By providing an overview of the principles of sport science and how these are applied in practice, the book is essential reading for students and academics, coaches and performers, physiotherapists, club doctors and professional support staff

Driving and sustaining culture change in Olympic sport performance teams: A first exploration and grounded theory

Stimulated by growing interest in the organizational and performance leadership components of Olympic success, sport psychology researchers have identified Performance Director-led culture change as a process of particular theoretical and applied significance. To build on initial work in this area, and develop practically meaningful understanding, a pragmatic research philosophy and grounded theory methodology were engaged to uncover culture change best practice from the perspective of newly appointed Performance Directors. Delivered in complex and contested settings, results revealed that the optimal change process consisted of an initial evaluation, planning, and impact phase adjoined to the immediate and enduring management of a multi-directional, perception- and power-based social system. As the first inquiry of its kind, these findings provide a foundation for the continued theoretical development of culture change in Olympic sport performance teams and a first model on which applied practice can be based

So what do we do with the rest of the day? Going beyond the pre-shot routine in professional golf

Optimally focused attention has been shown to be a key psychological characteristic for peak performance in golf; a feature commonly achieved with a pre-shot routine. However, research to date has yet to address how a golfer’s attention should best shift across the broader period of a whole game, or even including pre-event preparations, to support the pre-shot process and, ultimately, performance. Reflecting this knowledge gap, the present review aims to clarify current conceptual understanding and best practice against this wider perspective on attentional control, as well as highlight areas which must be considered for advances to be made. Specifically, research is required on the cognitive, behavioral, and temporal elements of routines used between shots and holes. Furthermore, to manage the attentional demands of the entire golf performance experience, such investigation also needs to explore the critical role of the support team and pre-tournament planning

Error analysis of collocation methods for the numerical solution of ordinary differential equations

PhD ThesisThis thesis is concerned with an error analysis of numerical methods for two point boundary value problems and much of the investigation is concentrated on collocation methods from an 'a posteriori' point of view. Most of the previous work on error bounds for boundary value problems has been of an 'a priori' nature, requiring knowledge of the inverse of the differential operator under consideration and furnishing convergence proofs and theoretical bounds on the error. There are however a few results of the converse nature and in this thesis means of determining error bounds in practice are developed, much of the analysis also applying to Fredholm integral equations of the second kind. In more detail, having firstly considered certain preliminaries the setting for the theory and the principal results for later use are presented. It is demonstrated how the approximate solution by collocation of linear differential equations fits into this background and different 'a priori' approaches are examined by example and shown to be rather unsatisfactory. The 'a posteriori' outlook is then considered and to achieve practical results the inverse of the approxi- mating operator is related to the inverse of the collocation matrix. However the problem of obtaining a suitable bound on the norm of this inverse operator is encountered and after examination of the most obvious approach which proves unsatisfactory a convenient bound is developed. Certain interesting computational properties of matrices involved in the process are discussed and a brief examination of condition numbers is given. A different theoretical analysis using the concept of a 'collectively compact sequence of operators' is considered and it is demonstrated that the approximate solution by collocation of linear differential equations can be 'extended' to satisfy the conditions for this theory. Again the error bounds are reduced to a more practical level and subsequently a generalisation of the notion of this extension is suggested. The implementation of the various practical error bounds which have been deduced is then considered in detail and formulae for their evaluation are presented. The numerical results of examples of this application are then given followed by a discussion of certain relevent points concerning the experiments. In the final chapter certain possible extensions of the analysis herein are briefly examined and lastly a review of the work of this thesis with appropriate conclusions is given