Sports Thoughts

Wayne Goldsmith

Real talk on coaching, leadership and sports parenting from Wayne Goldsmith — 30+ years working with Olympic programs worldwide. Challenging conventional thinking. Building better coaches, better parents, better athletes. waynegoldsmith.substack.com

  1. May 18

    How Great Coaches Keep Getting Better

    WHAT YOU WILL LEARN: * Why most coaches stop improving after their first few years; * The four habits of coaches who keep getting better; * How to build a professional development system that actually works. The Plateau Problem: Most coaches improve rapidly in their first few years. Then they plateau. Same sessions. Same methods. Same results. It’s the old saying: It’s not ten years of experience. It’s one year of experience ten times over! They stop learning - they stop growing. They get more experience but it’s the same experience over and over, year after year. But great coaches somehow keep ahead of the game - and the opposition. They keep learning and often find ways to accelerate their rate of learning faster than their competitors to always stay one step ahead. Great coaches know this secret: You get better by getting better at getting better!!! What is it that great coaches do to ensure their learning - and their performance - is always optimal? Habit 1: Reflect Daily Five minutes after every session ask yourself these simple but powerful questions: * What worked? * What didn’t? * What will I do differently next time? The best coaches are relentless self-assessors. Or ask yourself - after every training session, every game, every event: * Did I coach at my best today? * Did I make a difference - did I change a life today? * What did I learn today that will make me a better coach tomorrow? Get into the habit of actively pursuing learning from your own coachng experiences. Habit 2: Seek Feedback Not from other coaches….but from your athletes. Ask them: * What’s helping? * What’s not? * What do you need more of? Most coaches never ask the one group of people who really know them and their coaching. It can be difficult - I know - I get it. Some athletes will be reluctant to be truthful.But greatness is not a popularity competition! That’s why it’s worth spending time building genuine, trusting, honest relationships with your athletes so that they can tell you what you NEED to know - not just what you want to hear. Habit 3: Learn Outside Your Sport The best ideas for your coaching will often come from coaches, professionals and leaders working in other sports, other industries or other disciplines. Read widely. Watch widely. Connect the dots and build the connections others don’t see. Dare to be different - by daring to learn from everywhere and everyone. Most coaches live by the adage - “to a person with a hammer, every problem is a nail” - meaning, they generally only look within their own sport for solutions to problems. It’s a big wide world out there! You can learn from countless places and limitless sources if you open your mind and heart and just look! Habit 4: Find a Mentor A mentor that is: * Someone who’s been where you want to go; * Someone who’ll challenge you; * Someone who’ll hold you accountable. You can’t see your own blind spots. Find someone who can look you in the eyes and say with honesty and directness what you need to hear. SUMMARY: Great coaches don’t become great by accident. They reflect, seek feedback, learn widely and find mentors. They are ferocious and uncompromising in their learning habits. Improvement isn’t automatic. It’s a deliberate and purposeful choice you make to focus on your own learning every day. THREE WAYS TO APPLY THIS TO YOUR COACHING: * Start a coaching journal. Spend three minutes after every session considering three things: * what worked, * what didn’t, * what I’ll change. * This week, ask three athletes for honest feedback about your coaching. Listen without defending. Accept their views without judgement. * Identify one coach from another sport that you admire and reach out. Ask for a conversation. Most will say yes. Coaches learn from coaches! Wayne Goldsmith Check out my new SPORTING PARENTS COURSE https://coachwayne.gumroad.com/l/raisingathletes RAISING ATHLETES - The Sporting Parent’s Guide to Getting It Right. You not only get a unique learning experience with videos and study guides but you get a free copy of my book THE TALENT MYTH - WHY CHARACTER BEATS GENETICS EVERYTIME! And use this CODE PARENTS2026ST at checkout to receive 25% off the price! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit waynegoldsmith.substack.com/subscribe

    9 min

  2. May 14

    The Three Skills Every Coach Needs to Keep Learning.

    WHAT YOU WILL LEARN: * Why technical knowledge is no longer your competitive advantage; * The three skills that separate good coaches from great ones; * How to keep developing when no one is developing you. Technical Knowledge Is Now Free: Everything you learned in your coaching course is now available online. For free. You can pick up your phone and learn anytime, anywhere and mostly without paying a cent! Your athletes can Google and use Ai to find and learn the same drills and skills practices you can. The learning playing field has levelled. Knowledge isn’t your edge anymore. There are no secrets in sport. Everyone knows what you know. So what are the three skills you need to stay relevant and to find and retain your edge as a coach? Skill 1: Connection: The ability to build genuine relationships with athletes has never been more important. To make them feel seen, heard, respected and valued. This can’t be downloaded. It has to be developed and nurtured over time. Skill 2: Communication: Not just talking. Listening. Asking better questions. Knowing when to say nothing. Knowing what to say, when to say it and how to say it. Communication is perhaps the greatest of all coaching skills. Adapting your message to each athlete so they really hear you is an essential coaching skill. The best coaches are the best communicators - we’ve always known that. But now it’s about communicating with athletes in ways they will respond to. In my work with professional teams, we limit team meetings to a maximum of ten minutes. Why? Because the players are aged 18 - 27 and they will not - can not - engage with anything longer than ten minutes. We shape our messages and messaging for their ears - not our mouths! Skill 3: Adaptability: No two athletes are the same. No two sessions go to plan. The coaches of the future are flexible, responsive and comfortable with uncertainty. Learn and master the art of adaptive connection: shaping your coaching messaging to the heart and mind of each indivudal athlete you coach. The Real Challenge for Coaches and Coaching! Most coaching education stops at the certificate. But these three skills require ongoing deliberate development and daily practice. If you’re not actively working on them, you’re falling behind. Your learning journey really commences once you’ve got that certificate in your hand! SUMMARY: Technical knowledge got you started. When you studied for your coaching certificate, you learnt what drills to do, how to write a training session and how to teach the basic skills of your sport. But my friends, connection, communication and adaptability will take you forward. Your coaching education never ends - but isn’t that great news!?! Life is learning and learning is life. THREE WAYS TO APPLY THIS TO YOUR COACHING: * Before your next session, choose one athlete to really connect with. Ask them something that has nothing to do with sport. * In your next team talk, say less. Ask questions instead of giving instructions. See what happens. Less is more. And a maximum of ten minutes for all team meetings! * Pick one thing you’ll learn this month that has nothing to do with tactics, skills, strategies or sports technique. What’s one things you can learn about Leadership or Communication or Psychology. Stretch yourself. When is the last time you learnt something for the first time? Wayne Goldsmith Check out my new SPORTING PARENTS COURSE https://coachwayne.gumroad.com/l/raisingathletes RAISING ATHLETES - The Sporting Parent’s Guide to Getting It Right. You not only get a unique learning experience with videos and study guides but you get a free copy of my book THE TALENT MYTH - WHY CHARACTER BEATS GENETICS EVERYTIME! And use this CODE PARENTS2026ST at checkout to receive 25% off the price! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit waynegoldsmith.substack.com/subscribe

    7 min
  3. Who are you raising: the next someone else or the first them?

    May 11

    Who are you raising: the next someone else or the first them?

    Your child isn’t the next Tiger Woods. They’re not the next Serena Williams. They’re not the next Michael Phelps. Your child is a wonderful, unique, potentially incredible human being — different from anyone who’s ever lived. You don’t want them to be the NEXT anyone. You want them to be happy, healthy and caring. Following their heart. Pursuing their dreams. Living a long, fulfilled life. If they also happen to play in the NBA, win an Olympic gold medal or lift the Wimbledon trophy — that’s a bonus. Good kids — loved kids — make great athletes. Who are you raising: the next someone else or the first them? In this video I talk about why it’s important to support your kids to be their own original selves and not aspire to be anyone or anything else. By all means be inspired by the LeBrons of this world but in the end, all great human achievements have come from people who dared to be different, who chose to be unique - who did it their way. Wayne Goldsmith Check out my new SPORTING PARENTS COURSE https://coachwayne.gumroad.com/l/raisingathletes RAISING ATHLETES - The Sporting Parent’s Guide to Getting It Right. You not only get a unique learning experience with videos and study guides but you get a free copy of my book THE TALENT MYTH - WHY CHARACTER BEATS GENETICS EVERYTIME! And use this CODE PARENTS2026ST at checkout to receive 25% off the price! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit waynegoldsmith.substack.com/subscribe

    3 min
  4. When Athletes Become Coaches

    Apr 9

    When Athletes Become Coaches

    Some of the best coaches I’ve ever worked with were elite athletes. And some of the worst coaches I’ve ever worked with were elite athletes. Being great at playing a sport doesn’t automatically make you great at coaching it. The Pros: What Former Athletes Bring Credibility: They’ve been there. Done that. Won that. Athletes listen differently to someone who’s walked the path. Empathy: They know what it feels like. The nerves before a big game. The pain of losing. The grind of training when you don’t feel like it. They can feel the game in ways non-athletes cannot. Technical Insight: They understand the nuances. The micro-adjustments. The things that don’t show up in coaching manuals but make all the difference on game day. Network: They know people. Other athletes, coaches, administrators. Doors open that wouldn’t open for others. The Cons: Where Former Athletes Struggle Coaching Skills: Playing and coaching are completely different skill sets. Most elite athletes have never been taught how to teach, how to communicate, how to design sessions, how to manage a group. Patience: “I could do this at your age, why can’t you?” The assumption that everyone should learn the way they learned, train the way they trained, think the way they thought. Leadership and Team Building: Being a great teammate is not the same as building a great team. Managing egos, resolving conflict, creating culture; these are learned skills, not inherited ones. The Curse of Excellence: They were exceptional. They often don’t understand why others can’t just “do it.” The things that came naturally to them must be explicitly taught to everyone else. The Bottom Line Former athletes bring unique insights and experiences that no coaching course can replicate. Their credibility and empathy are genuine competitive advantages. But without intentional development of coaching skills, communication skills, and leadership skills, they often struggle. The best athlete-coaches are the ones who recognise that coaching is a profession that must be learned; not just an extension of their playing career. Are you a former athlete who coaches? What’s been your biggest challenge? This is What CoachTED is Built For My mentoring program CoachTED - Training, Education and Development - helps coaches; including former athletes; develop the skills that playing never taught them: * Communication and connection with athletes; * Session design and coaching methodology; * Leadership, team building and culture creation; * Managing parents and stakeholder relationships. 📩 wayne@moregold.com.au 📱 WhatsApp: +61 414 712 074 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit waynegoldsmith.substack.com/subscribe

    4 min
  5. Stop Separating Skills From Stress

    Apr 6

    Stop Separating Skills From Stress

    By Wayne Goldsmith Introduction: Your athletes look great in warm-up and drills but fall apart when it matters because you’ve trained them to only perform skills when they’re comfortable. Let’s try something different! Three Critical Learning Points: * The typical session structure — warm-up, drills, skills, THEN conditioning means skills are only ever practised fresh. * If athletes only own skills when rested, they don’t own them at all. * The fix is simple: integrate technique work INTO your hard sessions, not just before them. Training is More Than Just Training! Let me describe a typical training session. * Warm-up. * Easy movement. * Get the body ready. * Then drills and skills learning. * Technique work. Everything nice and controlled. Then the main session. Conditioning. Fitness. The hard stuff. Then cool down. Session over. Sound familiar? Here’s the problem with this structure. Skills are usually practised when athletes are fresh, rested, focused and comfortable. Then we put the skills away and do the hard work. But in competition when do athletes need their skills most? When they’re tired. When they’re under pressure. When their heart rate is through the roof and their brain is screaming at them to just survive. And if they’ve never practised skills in that state they don’t have them when and where it matters. I’ve watched this happen a thousand times. Beautiful technique on Tuesday night at training: Falls apart completely at Saturday’s game. Some might call it “choking” or “nerves” or “not being able to handle pressure.” I call it a training design problem. If you only practise your skills when fresh, you only own your skills when fresh. Competition isn’t “fresh”. Competition is chaos!!! It’s often an insane environment of fatigue and pressure and noise and stress! So why don’t we train skills in those conditions? The fix is simple: stop separating skills from stress. Insert a technical focus DURING your conditioning work. Add a skill component to your hardest threshold sets. Make athletes think about form when they’re exhausted. That’s where skill mastery actually lives: not in the warm-up or in your early session drills practices but in the final quarter of training and competition when everything hurts. Final Thoughts: We’ve been structuring sessions wrong for decades. Drills practices early on in the workout followed later by the hard work: as if skills and stress are separate categories. They’re not. Integration is everything. Train skills under stress or watch them disappear when and where it matters. Two Practical Application Tips: * Move one drill into your main session. Take your most important technique drill and insert it halfway through your conditioning work when athletes are fatigued. Watch what happens to their form. That’s where you’ll find the real truth about their competition ready skill level. * Add a “technique check” to your hardest sets. Every 10 minutes during intense work, stop and ask: “Show me perfect form for one rep.” If they can’t do it tired, they don’t own it. Let me know how it goes. Wayne This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit waynegoldsmith.substack.com/subscribe

    6 min
  6. Drop the Weights. Build a Mental Gym.

    Apr 1

    Drop the Weights. Build a Mental Gym.

    By Wayne Goldsmith Introduction: We spend thousands of hours building stronger bodies and almost zero time building stronger minds. Three Critical Learning Points: * The brain is a “muscle”- “a mental muscle” — and like any muscle, it needs systematic training, not just occasional attention. * Mental conditioning belongs IN your training sessions, not in a separate “sports psych” add-on lecture. * Athletes don’t choke because they’re unfit: they choke because we never trained their mind to handle the moment. How Can You Train the Body WITHOUT Training the Brain? Here’s what I see in most training programs. * Warm-up. * Drills. * Conditioning. * Skills. * Cool down. Session over. Physical work? Tick. Technical work? Tick. Mental work? Where is it????????? Maybe once a month someone comes in to talk about mindset. Maybe once a season there’s a workshop on goal setting. Maybe — if you’re very, very lucky there’s a sports psychologist attached to the program. But here’s the problem: mental conditioning that happens separate from training doesn’t readily transfer to competition. You can’t teach someone to stay calm under pressure in a classroom. You have to create pressure in training and teach them to handle it there. The brain is your “mental muscle”. It needs reps. It needs fatigue. It needs progressive overload, just like your legs and arms and heart and lungs. So why do we treat mental training like an optional extra? Here’s what I want you to try: Build mental exercises INTO your training sessions. Not as an add-on. As a foundation. * Visualisation between reps. * Focus cues under fatigue. * Decision-making drills when they’re tired and stressed. If athletes only practise mental skills when they’re fresh and relaxed, they only own those skills when they’re fresh and relaxed. Competition isn’t fresh and relaxed. Train accordingly. The gym between your ears is the one that wins championships. Final Thoughts: We’ve been obsessing over physical preparation for decades. It’s time to give mental preparation the same respect. Stop treating the mind as separate from the body. They train together — or they fail together. Two Practical Application Tips: * Add a “mental rep” to every physical set. Before the next rep, have athletes close their eyes for 5 seconds, visualise the perfect execution, then go. Simple. Builds the habit of mental preparation under fatigue. * Create “chaos moments” in training. Once a week, introduce unexpected pressure — change the drill mid-set, add a time constraint, simulate crowd noise. Train them to think clearly when things aren’t perfect. Let me know how you go about brain training! Wayne This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit waynegoldsmith.substack.com/subscribe

    5 min
  7. 3 Things You Can Do Right Now to Make You an Even Better Coach.

    Mar 25

    3 Things You Can Do Right Now to Make You an Even Better Coach.

    By Wayne Goldsmith With everyone trying to sell you everything — I thought I’d give you three things that will make you an even better coach. Three practical strategies you can do right now to enhance your coaching. And they’re free. I call them the 3 Ls of Coaching: 1. LOOK When an athlete walks towards you, make a conscious decision to look directly into their eyes. With some athletes that can be a bit intimidating, so maybe start by turning towards them and looking in their direction. When people look at us, we know they’re ready to connect with us, to engage with us — and to... 2. LISTEN Listening is seriously an underrated coaching skill. Not just nodding when your athletes talk. Not parroting them: “So you’re telling me you feel XYZ” or “I’m hearing you say ABC” — that way of listening died with the dinosaurs. Listen. Intently. Here’s a tip: count to three before responding. If your athletes know you’re looking at them and you’re listening to them — then the number one coaching skill of all becomes possible... 3. LOVE There are a lot of great quotes about coaches and coaching — but perhaps the best is this: Athletes don’t care how much you know — until they know how much you care. I’ve known a lot of great coaches. Some of them are real hard-arses. But even the toughest, most demanding coaches love and care about their athletes and want them to be all that it’s possible for them to be. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spoken to the athletes of a coach who seems like a real hard case — and the athlete will say: “Coach really cares about me.” Look. Listen. Love. What’s your best ever coaching tip? Wayne This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit waynegoldsmith.substack.com/subscribe

    7 min
  8. Talent Identification

    Mar 19

    Talent Identification

    Let’s talk about Talent Identification. Most countries, all professional clubs, and even a lot of schools do some form of talent identification. And most of them are doing it wrong. Let me explain. If you ask the world’s 100 greatest coaches this question: “What does it take to be great — to be a champion — in your sport?” The answers will include: * Resilience. * Commitment. * Dedication. * Persistence. * Willing to do whatever it takes. * Willingly do more than anyone else is prepared to do. * Passion. * Self-determination. * Integrity. * A love of learning and improvement. None of these 100 coaches will say “a large VO2 Max” or “long levers” or “fast twitch muscle fibres.” Yet look at what most talent ID programs actually test: * Sprints. * Agility. * Endurance. * Jumping. * Flexibility. Physical. Physical. Physical. If you have a talent ID program that includes all the usual suspects — but you’re not testing for the things that really matter — you’re making two of the greatest mistakes you can make in sport: * You will overlook many of the kids who have the potential to be great. * You will select a lot of kids who have the raw physical capabilities to succeed but lack the character, values and virtues essential to get to the top. In other words — you miss the right kids and select the wrong ones. The irony? We know what makes champions. Every great coach will tell you. But our talent ID systems measure the opposite. We test bodies. We should be looking for hearts. What would your talent ID program look like if you tested for character first? 📚 I wrote the book on this: The Talent Myth — Why Character Beats Genetics Every Time https://www.amazon.com/Talent-Myth-Character-Beats-Genetics/dp/0987155792 Sports Thoughts is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit waynegoldsmith.substack.com/subscribe

    7 min
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About

Real talk on coaching, leadership and sports parenting from Wayne Goldsmith — 30+ years working with Olympic programs worldwide. Challenging conventional thinking. Building better coaches, better parents, better athletes. waynegoldsmith.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Wayne Goldsmith
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    52
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Wayne Goldsmith
  • Show Website
    Sports Thoughts

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