The invite-only, exclusive event is taking place at Chelsea FC on the 10th and 11th October 2012. It brings together 350 of the very top coaches, managers and performance directors in the world for 2 days of learning, networking and insight and is dedicated to the identification, development and management of elite sporting talent.

Launched in 2009 as part of the prestigious Leaders Sport Summit, the event has a track-record of hosting the biggest names in sport to share insights into their approach and the innovations that deliver sporting excellence. In recent years the guest speakers have included: Arsene Wenger, Manager, Arsenal FC; Billy Beane, General Manager, Oakland A’s; Kevin Roberts, CEO, Saatchi and Saatchi; Matthew Syed, Author, Bounce; Johan Bruyneel, Sporting Director, Team Radio Shack; Gerard Houllier, Manager, Aston Villa FC; Mark Cavendish, World Champion Cyclist.

The organisers have been working closely with the conference Advisory Board, comprising of, amongst others, Chelsea FC, New York Knicks, British Cycling and the US Olympic Committee, to build this year’s programme, and have announced 3 main themes for 2012: the Science of Performance, the Analysis of Performance and Innovation for Performance.

Leaders CEO, James Worrall, says “Along with our expert Advisory Board, we have consulted extensively with our clients to select the very top people to speak this year and I’m really excited about the level of insight we’ll be delivering for attendees. We’re also introducing a number of focussed roundtable discussions, moderated by top experts in a range of disciplines, to draw on the extensive expertise in the audience. We’ll provide an unrivalled framework for sharing ideas and global best practice in elite performance.”

The Leaders in Performance in conference is a closed-doors, senior summit for the leading global figures in the delivery of sporting excellence. It has a strict vetting procedure for attendees and sells out every year. Delegates wishing to apply for a pass to attend are encouraged to do so at the earliest opportunity to avoid disappointment. To register for the event or to learn more about Leaders in Sponsorship please contact one of the team on +44 (0) 207 042 8666 or email performance@leadersinevents.com.

Budgett Named IOC Medical Chief 
English Institute of Sport (EIS) Senior Sport Physician Dr Richard Budgett, currently on secondment to LOCOG as Chief Medical Officer for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, has been named as the International Olympic Committee’s new medical and scientific director.

Dr Budgett, an Olympic gold medallist as a rower, will take over from Dr Patrick Schamasch, who is retiring after 27 years with the IOC, on October 1st.

A specialist consultant in sport and exercise medicine, Dr Budgett has worked part time with the EIS since 2003 working with athletes across a range of sports, whilst also fulfilling various other roles including that of Team GB’s chief medical officer at six Olympic Games as well as with England for the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

His appointment has been welcomed by EIS Director of Sport Medicine Dr Rod Jaques, who said: “I am delighted for Richard and would like to convey both my personal congratulations and those of the EIS on such a prestigious appointment.

“Richard is a hugely respected practitioner who has made a massive contribution over many years not only to the EIS but to the field of sport and exercise medicine and his appointment is a great testament to him as well as being great news for sport and exercise medicine in this country.”

Football Findings Suggest Concussions Caused by Series of Hits 
A two-year study of high school football players suggests that concussions are likely caused by many hits over time and not from a single blow to the head, as commonly believed.

Purdue University researchers have studied football players for two seasons at Jefferson High School in Lafayette, Ind., where 21 players completed the study the first season and 24 the second season, including 16 repeating players.

Helmet-sensor impact data from each player were compared with brain-imaging scans and cognitive tests performed before, during and after each season.

“The most important implication of the new findings is the suggestion that a concussion is not just the result of a single blow, but it’s really the totality of blows that took place over the season,” said Eric Nauman, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and an expert in central nervous system and musculoskeletal trauma. “The one hit that brought on the concussion is arguably the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Thomas Talavage, an expert in functional neuroimaging and co-director of the Purdue MRI Facility, said the scans indicate players are adapting their mental processes to deal with brain changes.

“The changes in brain activity we are observing suggest that a player has to use a different strategy to perform a task, and that is likely because functional capacity is reduced,” Talavage said. “The level of change in the fMRI signal is significantly correlated to the number and distribution of hits that a player takes. Performance doesn’t change, but brain activity changes, showing that certain areas are no longer being recruited to perform a task.”

Findings, detailed in a paper to appear online in the Journal of Biomechanics, are contrary to conventional thinking.

“Most clinicians would say that if you don’t have any concussion symptoms you have no problems,” said Larry Leverenz, an expert in athletic training and a clinical professor of health and kinesiology. “However, we are finding that there is actually a lot of change, even when you don’t have symptoms.”

The research may help to determine how many blows it takes to cause impairment, which could lead to safety guidelines on limiting the number of hits a player receives per week.

A common assumption in sports medicine is that certain people are innately more susceptible to head injury. However, the new findings suggest the number of hits received during the course of a season is the most important factor, Talavage said.
“Over the two seasons we had six concussed players, but 17 of the players showed brain changes even though they did not have concussions,” Talavage said. “There is good correlation with the number of hits players received, but we need more subjects.”

Skaters’ Brains: Specialized Training of Complex Motor Skills May Induce Sports-Specific Structural Changes in Cerebellum 
A new study, using brain imaging technology, reveals structural adaptations in short-track speed skaters’ brains which are likely to explain their extraordinary balance and co-ordination skills.

The work by Im Joo Rhyu from the Korea University College of Medicine, and colleagues, is published online in Springer’s journal Cerebellum.

The cerebellum in the brain plays an essential role in balance control, coordinated movement, and visually guided movement, which are key abilities required for short-track speed skaters as they glide on perfectly smooth ice, cornering and passing at high speeds.
To assess the effect of short-track speed skating training on the relative structure and size of the two brain hemispheres, the authors analyzed brain MRI scans of 16 male professional short-track speed skaters. They compared them to scans of 18 non-skaters, who did not engage in regular exercise.

They found that skaters had larger right hemispheres of the cerebellum and vermian lobules VI-VII (the lobes connecting the left and right parts of the cerebellum) than non-skaters. These results suggest that the specialized abilities of balance and coordination in skaters are associated with a certain amount of flexibility in the structure of the right hemisphere of the cerebellum and vermian VI-VII.

Why do the structural changes occur to the right side of the cerebellum? Gliding on smooth ice requires specialized abilities to control dynamic balance and coordination. During cornering at high speed, short-track speed skaters turn only to the left while maintaining balance on their right foot. Standing on the right foot activates the right lobes of the cerebellum.

In addition, learning a visually guided task is thought to occur in the right side of the brain. Therefore the larger volume of the right hemisphere of the cerebellum in these skaters is likely to be associated with the type of movements which the sport requires, for strong visual guidance while cornering and passing.

The authors conclude: “Short-track speed skaters’ specialized abilities of balance and coordination stimulate specific structural changes in the cerebellum, following extensive training. These changes reflect the effects of extraordinary abilities of balance and coordination on the right region of the brain.”

STRENGTH, CONDITIONING AND FITNESS NEWS

Peaking & Tapering for the Olympic Games 
The peaking and tapering involved in preparing athletes for the Games is specific to each sport and tailored to the individual, as EIS Strength & Conditioning Coach Mark Campbell explains.

“When it comes to strength and conditioning, the next hundred days will be about getting the best out of athletes in time for the Games.

“For some sports, the winter training they have accumulated will now be used during a competition phase which will lead right into the Games. For others however, they will be working on a block of training to prepare them to taper down just before the Games so that they peak in London.”

According to EIS Physiology Lead (Central) Jamie Pringle, the next 100 days are set to be highly productive for athletes from a Physiological perspective.

“100 days before competition sees perhaps the most productive phase where the time course of fitness gains from training really begin to take shape, direction and pace” he says.

“This is not the time for anything new, rather it’s the time to allow training to consolidate those fitness gains and manage and then minimise the fatigue of hard training. These next three months will be characterised by the pressure to deliver at the very highest form and precisely on time, and my highest priority right now is actually the coach and bringing confidence to their strategies, ideas and plans they’ve carefully chosen for their athletes. That means priority and clarity come to the forefront, and above all, minimising distractions by reinforcing simplicity and focus in all we do.”

Pressure only exists in our imagination.

Many sport psychologists and coaches talk about ‘managing pressure’, which makes the assumption that it exists. I view the concept of pressure management in the same way that I’d view an argument with an imaginary person. Have you ever tried to win an argument with an imaginary person? It’s a pretty futile exercise. Before you have even finished stating your point, you have already come up with a counter-argument. Perhaps the best way to resolve the situation is simply to refuse to argue in the first place. Merely by engaging in the argument, you start to create the illusion that the imaginary person is real.

My daughter, who has just turned 4, was very upset at the weekend because her imaginary friend refused to play with her. Although it seems slightly ridiculous to us, we might be doing something equally daft when we experience ‘pressure’. Maybe managing ‘pressure’ is a non-sense. In fact, by trying to manage it, we start to believe it might be real.

“Pressure is nothing more than the shadow of great opportunity”. Michael Johnson

Let’s start with the basics. People create pressure for themselves (Beilock, 2010). The only way we can ever experience ‘pressure’ is to create it in our own minds. It is a product of our imagination. If we experience ‘pressure’ it often because we are projecting an imaginary view of the future. Normally, we feel ‘pressure’ when we start imagining what might happen if we don’t achieve the outcome we desire or that we expect. “What if I don’t win?”… “What will the press say?”… “What will the coach say?”… “What will people think?”… Our mind starts to imagine what might happen. Our imagination conjures up an image of the future that we don’t want. As a result, our experience of pressure is born.

As we know, the only way we can experience the future, is through our imagination. Equally, the only way we experience the past is through memory. Both are mental projections. Keith Markman, a professor of psychology at the University of Ohio, has studied the way in which humans use imagination to produce images and pictures, narratives, fantasies, thought-flows and counter-factual thinking. His work shows that our experiences of pressure can also stem from our imagination (Markman, Klein & Suhr, 2008)

We can feel pressure when we perceive that there is an expectation on us. Like pressure, expectations are also figments of our imagination. Expectations could emanate from your imagination, or the imagination of somebody else. They are also projections into the future because they represent a view of what might happen. As such, they are fantasies. However expectations, and the ‘pressure’ that people self-generate as a result, can have a dramatic influence on their performance.

Some teams and players habitually under-perform when they reach major events. The reason for this may well be because the players feel pressure to perform for their nation. Many people would logically deduce that this was linked closely to the media coverage and the hype that had been created in the lead up to the event. However, the media coverage and the hype will only be perceived as ‘pressure’, if players buy into it. Just like any other expectation, it’s born out of the imagination.

In the 2010 FIFA World Cup, England performed well below par. There were several possible reason’s given for the performances. On a number of occasions Fabio Capello sighted “fear” and “pressure” (Christenson, 2010). England captain, Steven Gerrard (2010) talked of the “big expectations” when he discussed the under-performance of the England side. In an interview for the BBC, Jamie Carragher has also described the England player’s reactions to the press.

“The intensity of the press does get to the players,” said the 33-year-old. “Sometimes I think players would prefer the press guy to think they had played well, rather than the manager.” Carragher, 2011.

By projecting an image of what might happen, we may start doubting the outcome and feeling uneasy. Let’s not forget that our imagination is incredibly powerful. Used positively it can help us to optimise our performance. However, we have to be aware that we also use our imagination to create trap-doors for ourselves. Maybe the best approach is to concern ourselves with reality, not fantasy. Fantasy is a product of our imagination, just as expectations and pressure are. Often people have hopes for us, which they express. We sometimes take those on board as expectations, which we then try to fulfil. If we buy into expectations, we are trying to live up to a fantasy. Perhaps the best thing to do is to recognise it for what it is and to get on with reality.

Players often feel ‘pressure’ when they get the job wrong (Lane, 2001). Typically they may think that their job is to win, to achieve promotion or trophies. However, none of those things are the job. Normally when we get the job wrong, it is because we’re too busy focussing on the outcome. In reality, our job is to deliver the process. By aiming for the result, we set ourselves a job which is outside of our control (Bull, 1996). The fact that it is outside of our control means that it’s uncertain. Winning is never certain. Hitting a target is never certain. There is always an element of uncertainty. This uncertainty is what tends to cause us the angst (Boelen & Reijntjes, 2009). How can we be completely confident in our ability to achieve something that has uncertainty? If you’re trying to do an ‘impossible’ job or even a job which you have no control over, you will probably imagine pressure because you will not be 100 per cent sure that you can do the job. The job might seem too big or too daunting.

Take yourself back to 17th July 1994. It’s the world cup final in the Rose Bowl, Pasadena, USA. Brazil and Italy are deadlocked at 0-0 after extra time and the world cup will be settled by a penalty shoot-out. Dunga of Brazil has just netted to make it 3-2 to the South Americans. Up steps Roberto Baggio, arguably the world’s best player at the time. If he scores, Italy’s hopes are alive. If he misses, Brazil will win.

I am sure you know the rest. He missed! The world’s best player failed to hit the target from 12 yards. To be honest, his shot was nowhere near the target. It is a shot he would probably convert 99 times out of 100. However, on this occasion, something interfered. What was Baggio thinking? He may have started to imagine what would happen if he missed. He might imagine the scenes of despair back home in Italy, or the newspaper and TV headlines. He might start to imagine that his job is to realize the hopes of a nation and make the dreams of millions come true. I suspect that he forgot that his very simple job was to kick a ball 12 yards into an 8 foot x 24 foot rectangle.

If Roberto Baggio believed the job is to win the tournament, he might doubt his ability to do it. Even a confident player won’t know that they can do that job. There is often a gap between what we believe we can achieve, and what we think we must achieve. That gap manifests as the worry and anxiety we associate with pressure. If we create an expectation for ourselves (or take on board someone else’s expectations), we post a target. If we are not absolutely sure that we can achieve that target, we might start to have doubts and worries. If we also give that target some meaning, we will magnify our doubts and worries.

As we’ve said already, we create pressure therefore we can ‘de-construct it’ or dismantle it (Hartley, 2011). It is simply an extension of our ability to control all of our thoughts and emotions. Many people will not realise that they have ultimate control over what they think and how they feel, because they do not exercise it to its fullest extent. However, as Viktor Frankl (2004) states, the ability to take control over our mind, and our imagination, is “our last human freedom”.

Simon Hartley is an experienced sport psychologist and performance coach. He helps athletes and business people to get their mental game right. During the last 15 years, Simon has worked with gold medalists, world record holders, top 5 world ranked professional athletes and championship winning teams. He has worked at the highest level of sport, including spells in Premiership football, Premiership rugby union, First Class County Cricket, Super League, professional golf, tennis, motor sport and with numerous Great British Olympians. 2011 saw the publication of Simon’s first book, Peak Performance Every Time (published by Routledge), and the delivery of the first ever Be World Class Conference. In 2012, Simon’s second book How To Shine (published by Capstone), will hit the shelves.

THIS MONTH’S ARTICLES:
KEISER: DUTCH TRAINING PROGRAM ACHIEVES OLYMPIC DREAM
PROZONE ANALYSIS: MLS SALARY CAPS
MARK NESTI: CRITICAL THINKING OR THINKING CRITICAL?
ARTHUR HORNE: IMPROVING COLLABORATION BETWEEN SPORTS MEDICINE AND SPORTS PERFORMANCE SERVICES; A NEW MODEL FOR THE CARE OF STUDENT ATHLETES

At Boston University, they noted some key advantages: delivery of superior health care services, improved on-going educational opportunities for staff and students, and enhanced working conditions for athletic trainers.

In 2011, here at Northeastern University we followed suit, placing both athletic training and performance services under the direct supervision of sports medicine personnel. The head team physician for the university provides oversight for a dual-trained athletic trainer and strength coach who directs these sports performance services. These changes were in response to difficulties we had observed, including an apparent lack of standardization of services, especially related to prevention models provided by athletic training and strength and conditioning.

Also apparent were communication breaches between and among the coaching staff, strength and conditioning personnel, sports medicine providers, and the student-athletes who were receiving care from these individuals.

So university authorities agreed to implement a new model for the care of student athletes that placed athletic training as well as strength and conditioning under the supervision of sports medicine. This allowed us to consider the potential advantages as well as challenges that will be encountered as the model is implemented.

One clear advantage is to improve collaboration during pre-participation screening for athletes. In 2007, the NCAA mandated that all student athletes receive a pre-participation examination (PPE) by medical staff prior to engaging in collegiate sports.

Under the traditional model, which remains the standard of care at the vast majority of colleges and universities in the US, entering athletes undergo an initial evaluation including a comprehensive medical history, immunisation history, and a focused physical examination.

Although this meets NCAA bylaws, it doesn’t comprehensively evaluate the athlete’s readiness to participate in high-level sporting events. There are risk factors to injury in athletes that can be recognized during pre-participation screening that can potentially be addressed by targeted treatment. Right now, techniques in strength and conditioning and sports performance are being developed to address these issues, but they are currently disparate from the PPE under the traditional model.

There are easily measured musculoskeletal risk factors that can be identified during pre-participation screening – a recent prospective demonstrated a 17-fold increase in injury risk identified among professional ice hockey players who exhibit adduction to abduction strength of less than 80%. In addition, athletes who lack appropriate hip abduction and external rotation strength demonstrate increased rates of lower extremity injury and knee pain from patellofemoral pain syndrome.

In response, techniques have been developed to target these risk factors, and have been shown to be effective in improving function and reducing risk of injury. Including screening for such risk factors into the PPE would allow for more collaborative and effective management of these musculoskeletal disorders in athletes. Pre-participation screening by strength and conditioning could be followed by targeted medical management and training interventions to reduce risk and improve function.

Another potential area of collaboration involves functional movement screening, which has been theorized to predict athletic performance capabilities. Traditionally, strength & conditioning professionals conduct these screening procedures independent of the medical PPE. By integrating these strength and conditioning screens into the medical care of athletes, a more unified management scheme is perpetuated.

For example, through functional movement testing of athletes, a squat pattern may be assessed, which may identify limiting factors such as psoas restrictions or dorsiflexion limitations. Once identified, an integrated assessment by both the medical and strength and conditioning personnel could determine limitations to training and devise appropriate training regimens.

The assessment of the kinetic chain also serves as an opportunity for collaboration between sports medicine and strength training. It is usual for athletic trainers to evaluate and consider the joint above and below the area of chief complaint during an evaluation of a patient with a musculoskeletal injury.

Perhaps examining these inter-related joints during initial screening also makes sense to ensure that the clinically relevant relationships meet movement minimums. Since strength and conditioning coaches are familiar with this approach and follow the course of student athletes throughout the course of the academic year, they are ideally positioned to perform this assessment.

If incorporated as part of the PPE, these professionals would add to the initial assessment and provide a metric that can be measured over time. As such, we suggest that this serve as a venue for strength and conditioning coaches to be involved in initial evaluation of athletes during PPE and the annual medical screening process.

I suggest a collaborative effort during the PPE and annual evaluations that includes joint efforts between athletic training personnel and sports medicine staff. This would address disadvantages of the current PPE process under the prevalent care model. Current process does not evaluate for factors that sideline athletes most often and fail to address those issues that monopolize the majority of an athletic trainer’s time. Since a large percentage of sports medicine patient care/time-units are dedicated towards overuse and preventable musculoskeletal trauma, it would be worthwhile to develop a more robust physical examination that integrates and utilizes the skill sets from across disciplines. The new model of athletic care that coordinates care of athletes under a medical model may facilitate these changes.

It could also provide an opportunity to improve continuity of care for athletes and a more effective transition from injury, to rehabilitation, to restoration of elite performance. Currently, the care of athletes following injury is fragmented, with the goals of medical treatment disconnected from subsequent rehabilitation and strengthening.

Patients are first seen and evaluated by sports medicine personnel, who focus mainly on improvement in terms of symptomatology, such as pain. Once this goal is achieved, these athletes are effectively discharged into the care of the strength and conditioning staff, regardless of the athlete’s capacity to perform at an elite level.

More often than not, these athletes continue to have difficulty performing movement minimums and lack the necessary function to perform advanced strength training manoeuvres, leaving the patient in an athletic purgatory – too healthy for sports medicine but not well enough for advanced training. In many of these cases, strength and conditioning coaches are left serving as an “advanced rehabilitation coordinator”, applying strength training solutions to an underlying medical problem that clearly requires a medical solution and oversight by a trained medical professional.

Having medical staff oversee and help coordinate care of athletes will help moderate the disconnect that exists. However, part of the difficulty with the model now, which will remain as a challenge under the new model, is a difference with regard to goals of care. Medical management of athletic injury typically focuses on amelioration of pain, while performance training focuses on restoration of function and level of performance.

These goals can come at odds with one another. For example, sports medicine personnel may recommend limiting certain primitive movements if they worsen pain and symptomatology associated with injury. This may contradict the efforts of strength and conditioning staff.

Although avoidance of certain movements within the appropriate stage of healing and rehabilitation are clearly needed, an integrated approach to medical care and rehabilitation will help provide a unified assessment and treatment plan that will allow injured athletes to perform strength training exercises that will both limit contributions to pain or dysfunction while also facilitating to return to participation.

Coordinating care of athletes under medical guidance may also help improve gaps in terminology that exist between medical and training staff. These gaps ultimately lead to miscommunication and suboptimal care of athletes. Both therapeutic and performance exercises are often named inconsistently between the two camps, without consistent reference to anatomy (e.g. Bird-dog, Physioball wall leg lift).

A new approach towards care of athletes, which coordinates care under medical supervision, is undoubtedly the choice for colleges and universities wishing to reap these benefits. As far as I know, Northeastern University is the only US university competing in NCAA Division I Athletics with both Athletic Training and Strength & Conditioning services under a medically orientated and directed model, providing improved care to athletes by improving coordination of care between multiple parties that traditionally have independent goals that often lead to fragmented care.

Art Horne is the Director of Sports Performance at Northeastern University in the US, with 19 Varsity teams in the NCAA. The article above was put together with Gian Corrado, the university’s Head Team Physician, and Eugene Yim, from Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

THIS MONTH’S ARTICLES:
SIMON HARTLEY: PRESSURE; FANTASY OR REALITY?
KEISER: DUTCH TRAINING PROGRAM ACHIEVES OLYMPIC DREAM
PROZONE ANALYSIS: MLS SALARY CAPS
MARK NESTI: CRITICAL THINKING OR THINKING CRITICAL?

The answer to this for someone in my academic discipline may come as a surprise to some. I believe that my role is primarily to develop critical thinking. This skill builds on an ability to be able to patiently and systematically examine an argument in order to understand it better. To achieve this, the learner must first acquire knowledge. This knowledge should be based on current thinking, and even more importantly, on the tried and tested theories and ideas formulated by the elder generation and those no longer with us! Critical thinking detached from this knowledge base is pure vanity. For thinking to be a creative act, there has to be some raw material for us to act upon. The latest phrases capture this truth. Evidence based practice in sport should mean being able to justify our decisions based on previous and current knowledge. Reflective practice means thinking critically about your actions. Surely these are human universals, although at some times and in certain places these have been tried more successfully than others.

When the Church founded the great Universities of Europe 800 or so years ago, their intention was to create a “hedged in space” for the free pursuit of truth and facts. At Oxford, Glasgow, Naples, Paris and Prague, the Papal Bull establishing these institutions made it clear that their job was to create a particular type of culture. A place where scholars and their students could examine the ideas of the world – painstakingly and dispassionately, and without bias and prejudice. And from this, to be able to identify the options available, and most crucially, be able to explain why in their judgement some choices are better than others. And it is this final capacity, being able to consider a range of possibilities and select the optimum, which is the reason for the process of critical thinking. All of the endowments, tax revenues and myriad of other sources of income that have gone into the Universities over the years are really about developing this hugely important idea. But this treasure trove is not for the exclusive use of the University but is for the broader community. For our sport in all its forms and guises to become more of what we want it to be, it needs to be infused with an army of critical thinkers.

So if this is what we need, is it what we want? What do the signs tell us about our desire to fill our sports organisations with critical thinkers? Which places welcome those who bring their critical faculties to the work place, and which are reluctant to employ such trouble makers? Maybe this latter group includes those who see critical thinking as something negative and merely about criticism? Maybe it is because the status quo is always more psychologically comforting (apart from the fact that it can’t and never has existed). But then we who work in the ever changing, exciting and dynamic world of sport have always known this!

And finally, let me speak on behalf of my students who are leaving me after 3 years of critical thinking. If you recruit new staff, does your organisation place the ability to think critically at the top of the list? Do you take on employees who will meekly follow the party line, or those who will ask the difficult questions? Or have you failed by forgetting about the other side of the equation that is by taking on people with lots of opinions based on little knowledge? Is your organisation more in line with the founding principles of our ancient Universities, or do you only value vocational skills and practical knowledge? Because if you do see it this way, then maybe you shouldn’t be recruiting from the best Universities and the best courses!

Dr Mark Nesti CPsychol., is Reader: Psychology in sport at Liverpool John Moores University. His most recent book, Psychology in Football, is based on work inside Premiership clubs over 9 seasons.

THIS MONTH’S ARTICLES:
SIMON HARTLEY: PRESSURE; FANTASY OR REALITY?
KEISER: DUTCH TRAINING PROGRAM ACHIEVES OLYMPIC DREAM
PROZONE ANALYSIS: MLS SALARY CAPS
ARTHUR HORNE: IMPROVING COLLABORATION BETWEEN SPORTS MEDICINE AND SPORTS PERFORMANCE SERVICES; A NEW MODEL FOR THE CARE OF STUDENT ATHLETES

As usual, Prozone has been at the forefront of the discourse, recently involved in publishing a study which addresses the issue of how clubs can effectively recruit players in spite of the restrictions presented by salary caps. Focussing on MLS, a competition in which clubs receive a share of a common pool of salary cap dollars to spend on their squads each season, the study shifts performance analysis from qualitative to quantitative measures, using objective data to assess individual player output in relation to factors such as salary and experience. When sheer economics becomes the primary concern, the isolation of raw on-field production is paramount.

The research paper, compiled by Michael Fotopoulos, an independent performance analyst, and Andrew Opatkiewicz, Prozone Sports’ Head of Business Development – Americas, which was first presented at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in March, identifies disconnects between player salaries and player performance and suggests empirical methods through which football clubs can optimise their resources to recruit efficiently under restrictive financial conditions. Using Prozone data gathered in MLS over a period of three years, an analytical structure was implemented to distil down into one measure the conversion of offensive events into goals. That measure, labelled as Offensive Production (OFF), weights events according to their frequency and, when broken down on an individual level, provides each player with a raw figure for their seasonal offensive production. A similar process was used to determine a measure for Defensive Production (DEF), the difference being that individual events were analysed in terms of the extent to which they limited opponents’ OFF, while also taking into account the ability of the individual to win and sustain possession (POSS) in both the offensive and defensive phases of the game.

When the measures are calculated and scored as a percentile for each phase of the game, it is then possible to plot them on a simple graph and use the results as a framework for evaluating overall player performance. The three measures (OFF, DEF and POSS) are combined to create an overall AREA score for each player which, when ranked as a percentile, make it possible to view individual player seasons as a part of the wider data set. With player production quantified in this way, a general baseline for output is established and can be used to put the value of current player minutes and salaries into a deeper context, thereby highlighting any potential inefficiencies in the marketplace.

Having implemented its unique methodology, the study produced some interesting results. With the majority of MLS signings either coming through the college draft or being brought in from overseas, the research paper concluded that both cohorts provide a similar level of risk and reward when assessed in terms of their financial cost. There are exceptions to every rule, but the on-field production of international players is not significantly high enough to warrant making them a Designated Player (one of the three players clubs are allowed whose salaries are not subject to the salary cap) and paying them hugely inflated wages. Indeed, with Designated Players not dominating the top percentiles of observed individual seasons, the report suggests that clubs make it their priority to identify the best available college talent, a group which reduces salary risk while still producing at a high level. Other results and a more detailed statistical breakdown can be found in the full paper which is available on the Prozone Sports website.

While the research paper does not claim to give a comprehensive solution to teams’ recruitment strategies under salary cap conditions, it does provide a general reference point for evaluating player output with respect to salary costs. Using the AREA model as a starting point, MLS clubs will doubtless look to keep refining their approach to player recruitment in the seasons ahead, the end goal being to optimise their resources to the stage where they can minimise the effects of the salary cap constraints, free up more resources, and grow the on-field competitiveness of their franchise.

Whether or not such a system could be implemented in Europe remains to be seen, but the introduction of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules means that clubs are having to be increasingly conscious as to how they are using their resources. In the Premier League, with the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) having been brought in to encourage the development of home-grown talent, the incentives for developing local players and limiting financial outlay on international stars are greater than ever. We may still be some way off seeing the imposition of a salary cap, but the tempestuous economics of the European game have made such a possibility more conceivable than ever. The debate continues.

Prozone offer the most accurate performance analysis service in world of football. They do this by working alongside some of the leading clubs, organisations and coaches to create performance analysis systems that meet the very highest requirements of the modern game. Their world leading systems track the player movements every 10th of a second and give detailed technical and physical data on over 2,500 actions in every game. This unrivalled level of objectivity and precision is why they are the world’s only independently validated performance analysis system. It is also the reason why 75% of clubs in the Premier League and Championship work with Prozone and in total over 100 clubs, leagues and federations world-wide now benefit from their leading performance analysis service.

THIS MONTH’S ARTICLES:
SIMON HARTLEY: PRESSURE; FANTASY OR REALITY?
KEISER: DUTCH TRAINING PROGRAM ACHIEVES OLYMPIC DREAM
MARK NESTI: CRITICAL THINKING OR THINKING CRITICAL?
ARTHUR HORNE: IMPROVING COLLABORATION BETWEEN SPORTS MEDICINE AND SPORTS PERFORMANCE SERVICES; A NEW MODEL FOR THE CARE OF STUDENT ATHLETES

Despite the leap in technology over the last 15 years that provides the football industry with a rich set of match data, team and player analysis remains relatively unchanged. Such analysis is little more than tabulations of events that occur on the pitch within a period of time. A common example is the image of the football pitch gridded in zones with team passing percentages overlaid on it. Another example is a cloud of the spatial location of player touches, movements, or passes. If we animate the cloud over the course of the match, we can call that advanced match analysis!

Nevertheless, such ‘simple’ analysis does retain some advantages. To start, these analyses are easy to compile. The most complicated procedure is the filtering of match events by player, zone, or time, for either a single match or multiple matches over one or several seasons. These functionalities are standard features in the analysis packages supplied by the sports data companies. Second, these analyses are easy to understand, whether by a decision-maker, such as a manager or a sporting director, or by the general public. This particular advantage is quite significant, and has implications for those who want to develop more sophisticated analyses, which I will return to later.

Yet this type of analysis has one critical flaw: it neglects contextual and spatial information associated with the match data and produces a misleading picture of team and player performance as a result. To illustrate this flaw, let’s discuss the anatomy of a pass.

A football pass, to give a very precise description, is an attempt to intentionally redirect the path of the ball from one player to a teammate using either the head or feet. That event is conditional on a number of parametric variables, including:

- the player who initiates the event
- the match time
- the player’s spatial position on the pitch
- the relative location of any opposing players
- the body part used to strike the ball
- the state of play (open or set-piece)
- the final spatial position of the ball when touched

The final outcome of a pass is either success (retained team possession) or failure (loss of possession). Some of these parameters, such as the player, the body part, and the state of play, have a limited number of values. One can only attempt a legal pass with either foot, the head, or the chest, for example. But the inclusion of a spatial coordinate and time results in an infinite number of possible conditions and situations for a pass.

Yet the extent of current match analysis is a summary of pass events, or other field events, as if all pass events are performed under identical conditions and situations. If we accept that a pass is a function of spatial, temporal, and contextual parameters, why do we continue to insist that a tabulation of all field events tells us anything meaningful?

It is much more challenging to fully incorporate contextual and spatial data in an analysis than it is to develop a map of passing summaries and positional clouds. Even though some football clubs and sport data companies are starting to hire analytical talent to extract more information from their data, analysis that makes full use of context and space remains beyond the limits of expertise within these organisations. The common refrain from the conventional wisdom is that football is a sport of continuous play between players who act cooperatively and interdependently, and as such is much more resistant to statistical analysis than other sports such as baseball. Yet there are complex systems in nature, society, and technology with a dynamic structure similar to football that have been analysed extensively, and from which meaningful insight has been extracted.

Networked systems are characterised by a large number of individual actors who interact through either communication or physical action. An individual unit may perform a simple action, but multiple numbers of these units interacting cooperatively or competitively produce a rich and complex set of behaviours. Examples of such systems abound in the natural and physical world. The field of systems biology is devoted to studying the complex functions and behaviours of cells, which involves complex signalling networks between proteins and genes. Communication is practically synonymous with a network, whether wired or wireless, static or mobile, or transmitting or sensing. A third network that has taken on increased interest from researchers and the general public is the social network that describes the interactions and influences of people. All of these systems involve continuous or semi-continuous flows of information between actors, who may be modelled individually with physical laws or statistical models but interact with other actors in complex ways. Football, and other field invasion sports like it, are no different from these networks.

Networked systems, whether from biology, sociology, communication, or sport, are analysed using statistical network models. These models have been studied for over 50 years by sociologists and statisticians, but in the last 20 years there has been increased research from the physics, computer science, and broader mathematics communities. Researchers describe a network in terms of a collection of nodes (actors) and edges (relationships). The edges are then given weights that correlates with some measure of importance. The importance of the nodes is estimated by examining the number of links between a node and its neighbours and the importance of those links in the network.

We relate network models to football by viewing players as the actors and their passes and other interactions as relationships. The common approach by researchers is to create a matrix of the passes made by one player to another and create a map that compares the influence, or centrality, of a player on the run of play. Such maps can also be used to determine the zones or channels through which a team’s play develops. While these maps represent a significant leap forward in football analysis, they still don’t make full use of match contexts or spatial data. Moreover, there is much talk about influence, but not enough, in my opinion, about effectiveness or value. One value measurement that I would like to see is the idea of an “expected goal value” — the probability that a specific action will create a goal, for any action on the field during a game. Such a value can be made a function of spatial and contextual variables and updated through a statistical network model. This metric would turn out to be quite powerful as it would enable new levels of analysis on the effectiveness of players, tactics, set-piece plays and playing formations.

While statistical network modelling presents new avenues for match analysis, there are some research and presentation issues that need to be addressed. The first is the modelling structure: are the results capturing true differences in performance or do they capture artefacts of the algorithm? In professional sport, the difference between players, and especially the differences within elite players, are not very great. The second issue is initialisation. Statistical network models often require an initialisation of shot or passing probabilities which can either be derived from real data or estimated from a statistical approximation. The third issue, and perhaps the most critical one, is presentation: results have to be meaningful and understandable to be accepted and then adopted by a decision-maker. The ability to communicate the meaning will improve as researchers understand better the implications of the network analysis, but proper explanation of the analysis will be a significant task.

Football is a game of simple rules that permits a rich set of plays and interactions between players, which has made it fascinating to watch and challenging to analyse. The use of more sophisticated data provides the football industry with a much more comprehensive view of the game than ever before. It’s time for football analysis to reach a new level of sophistication by incorporating methodologies from other communities dealing with complex and dynamic networks in order to make full use of the advanced datasets now available.

Dr Howard Hamilton is the Founder and CEO of Soccermetrics Research & Consulting LLC, a company that develops advanced team and player performance metrics for football clubs, player agents, league and media organisations, and other members of the football industry.

THIS MONTH’S ARTICLES:
DARREN BURGESS: TEAM SPORTS TECHNOLOGY IN SPORTS SCIENCE – ARE WE SEEING THE BIG PICTURE?
JEREMY SNAPE: UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE, CULTURE AND IDENTITY WITHIN HIGH PERFORMANCE ENVIRONMENTS – A RADICAL, CREATIVE AND CARING APPROACH
PROZONE ANALYSIS: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MARCH
MARK NESTI: IDENTITY AND SPORT – FINDING MEANING IN TIMES OF CRISIS!

In keeping with that commonly-held view, Blackburn Rovers boss Steve Kean recently told the BBC that March would be a “massive” month for his club as they look to stave off relegation, while Sir Alex Ferguson went as far as to say to The Independent that top spot in the division isn’t relevant until the winter has been ridden out. “The crucial period is always the end of March,” the Manchester United manager said. “If you drop points then, that can impact your opponents and give them a boost and make their opportunities better.”

Consistently high performance throughout the year is, of course, a guarantor of success, but is there any truth behind the claims that March is the month which determines the outcome of a season more than any other? While there is a certain amount of logic behind the argument, we can use Prozone’s vast range of Premier League performance data to subject it to closer scrutiny and assess whether or not there are significant differences in teams’ styles of play during this supposedly critical period of the campaign, differences which might show how, if at all, clubs react throughout March as the end of the season approaches.

One reliable indicator of performance is the basic figure for the number of points gained per team per month over the last five seasons. As the graph demonstrates, March does not stand out as being a time of significantly raised performance for teams at the two poles of the Premier League table. Indeed, the clearest trend is that title-winning teams generally pull away from their rivals during December and January, picking up 2.6 points per game against the average of 2.1 collected by the other teams in the top four.

While the average points collected per game per month gives us a rough idea of the level to which a team is playing, it is possible to analyse to a much greater level of detail by assessing Prozone’s monthly averages for key performance indicators (KPIs) since the 2006/07 season. Interestingly, the attacking variables fluctuate very little over the course of a campaign, something which leads to goals per game never rising above 1.34 or falling below 1.20 in any given month. Similarly, there are only very minor changes to be seen in the numbers of passes made by Premier League teams, a gradual decline being seen between December and April (298.48 per game average) before picking up to 319.77 in May.

Although the attacking KPIs show little significant change from month to month, the defensive variables are more transitory. The number of tackles per game rises consistently each month as the season progresses, with the figures for the number of times possession is won and lost mirroring this pattern – as would be expected – until a slight drop off in March and April. While these figures demonstrate that, other than with regard to the number of times possession is exchanged during games, there is relatively little fluctuation in the KPIs for the league as a whole over the course of a season, they do not provide us with information as to whether or not individual teams in specific their contexts make alterations to their styles of play.

By using Prozone’s full data set for the 2010/11 Premier League season we can break the statistics down further in order to focus on the teams in the top and bottom four places of the division, the clubs that had more to play for at the time and were therefore more likely to show a degree of statistical change. Interestingly, what the data highlights is that it is during the winter months that teams deviate most dramatically from their otherwise relatively consistent performance levels, that it is between November and January that clubs at both ends of the table usually make the biggest losses and gains relative to the rest of the league.

Through December and January the number of passes sees its largest decrease, with the quality of distribution following suit. There are also noticeable changes amongst the attacking fields of the KPI data, the difference in the levels of efficiency and performance between the teams at the top and the teams at the bottom reaching its peak during the winter. As the shooting accuracy for teams fighting relegation falls to 47% in December, the same figure for sides with title aspirations rises to over 60%. While there is a great deal of statistical consistency between teams across the league, as other teams struggle to maintain their performance levels during the packed winter schedule, the clubs at the top find it within themselves to consolidate their position.

Having looked at the pure performance data, we can go to an extra level of detail by analysing the physical output of teams on a month by month basis. What those figures show us is that total distance covered per team has historically remained remarkably consistent, while there is a slight drop in high intensity running and sprint distances during December, January and February as the volume of matches increases.

March is undoubtedly an important month in the Premier League season due to it often being the time when the destination of the title and the candidates for relegation begin to emerge and set themselves apart. It is also a period during which teams begin to focus on short-term goals as the final run-in gets underway and the margins between success and failure become increasingly fine. However, in terms of pure performance it is no more significant than any other month, with the available data highlighting the busy pre and post-Christmas schedule as the time when clubs see the biggest rises and falls in the levels of their performances.

The onset of spring will always be a crucial waypoint for clubs in determining their aims for the final quarter of the season, but it is consistency and the ability to battle through the tough winter period while keeping performance levels high, to stay within touching distance of their rivals throughout, that will bear fruit in the long-run.

Prozone offer the most accurate performance analysis service in world of football. They do this by working alongside some of the leading clubs, organisations and coaches to create performance analysis systems that meet the very highest requirements of the modern game. Their world leading systems track the player movements every 10th of a second and give detailed technical and physical data on over 2,500 actions in every game. This unrivalled level of objectivity and precision is why they are the world’s only independently validated performance analysis system. It is also the reason why 75% of clubs in the Premier League and Championship work with Prozone and in total over 100 clubs, leagues and federations world-wide now benefit from their leading performance analysis service.

THIS MONTH’S ARTICLES:
DARREN BURGESS: TEAM SPORTS TECHNOLOGY IN SPORTS SCIENCE – ARE WE SEEING THE BIG PICTURE?
JEREMY SNAPE: UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE, CULTURE AND IDENTITY WITHIN HIGH PERFORMANCE ENVIRONMENTS – A RADICAL, CREATIVE AND CARING APPROACH
MARK NESTI: IDENTITY AND SPORT – FINDING MEANING IN TIMES OF CRISIS!
HOWARD HAMILTON: NETWORK MODELLING – AN APPROACH FOR CAPTURING CONTEXT AND SPACE IN FOOTBALL MATCH DATA

Jeremy Snape is a former English professional cricket player and current Director of The Sporting Edge, a performance coaching business, supporting leaders and teams in elite sport and high-pressure business. Most recently he has been working with the South African national cricket team as performance coach and here shares some insights into his work and approach.

At the end of the interview, Jeremy takes one final moment to reflect “…the paradox is we expect that high performance means that we need to be at the edge of our comfort zones, but this is a scary place to live, so to think that we don’t need any support to live in that place is bizarre, if we don’t have any support we’ll come back to safety and safety won’t get us to high performance… I realised that, for me, cricket was a mental game not a technical game, trying to stay at the edge of my limits at international level taught me that to live there for a long period of time I needed support and this started my fascination with life in high performance environments…” The 60-minute interview has explored Jeremy’s initiation into and journey through professional cricket, his transition immediately post-retirement into a performance-coaching role at South Africa Cricket, and the challenges and unique nature of his philosophy within Sporting Edge. Yet, it is that final statement of the interview that gives us a glimpse into the thinking of someone that is now regarded as being one of the leading practitioners in supporting people in high performance sport and business. He has that rare and unique commodity of having experienced life on the international stage, knowing what it feels like to play in front of 120,000 spectators at Easy Gardens in Calcutta on only your second England tour, understanding the psychological principles of such thoughts and emotions during these episodes of life, but more importantly, how to translate these experiences in a supportive manner to people in sport and business.

This rather exclusive journey began in Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, when having played recreational cricket from the age of 9 with his brother, he found himself on the Staffordshire conveyor belt to Under 13’s, 15’s, regional cricket with the midlands and then England. Inevitably scouts come knocking and he signed for Northants who Jeremy suggested were extremely supportive of his desire to continue in education and his subsequent degree in Natural Science at Durham University. Those early years in the incredibly talented Northants side alongside the likes of Alan Lamb, Curtly Ambrose, David Capel, to name but a few, gave Jeremy a valuable education in the sport. He recounts an experience with Alan Lamb that depicts a sense of self-awareness amongst talented individuals “he [Alan Lamb], as my first captain, was the kind of guy that was very talented, I used to throw to him on the morning of the game as the 12th man, whereas throwing to an opening batsman I would have a sore arm, with Lamby he would walk over to the net with no pads on, hit 3 balls and say ‘I’m ready’. That would be considered very old school now, but equally he was very aware of what made him successful and it wasn’t that over dependency on training, more of a feel thing… it definitely taught me that different styles exists, picking up that there was more than just one way of doing things.” The Northants side never really fulfilled its potential and Jeremy got an opportunity to move to Gloucestershire in his mid to late 20’s and was part of a side that won 6 trophies in his first 4 years. A further insight emerges that perhaps defines Jeremy’s belief about what it takes to achieve in high performance settings. He suggests that it was a special time where a less talented bunch came together and won an incredible number of trophies and redefined 1-day cricket. A very low ego and hard working cultural environment was allowed to develop where individuals were striving to see how good they could be. Work ethic and drive became an infectious theme and Jeremy notes “…we were one of the first teams to see ourselves as athletes that played cricket, rather than cricketers that just had to bat and bowl.” The early signs of understanding the importance of a collective identity are clearly apparent here and are guiding principles of Jeremy’s philosophy.

Jeremy’s exposure to international cricket with England clearly further helped to develop his understanding of competing in high-pressure situations. After a Man of the Match performance on his debut in the 1 day side in Zimbabwe, Jeremy describes his second tour with England in Calcutta as a great reflective point, and not only for playing a horrendous shot after running out Freddie Flintoff. He notes that “…although I’d progressed quite quickly, the game hadn’t changed, the context and expectation did, that’s what sparked not only a fascination of the mental side of performance, but also a drive to investigate that further and see if I could offer some support to players and coaches who were in those very high pressure situations, because I knew that sometimes I’d done well, but equally I’d had as many events that I’d not played well under pressure and that was the crucible for all those ideas that became my second career.” This second career started with an MSc in Sport Psychology at Loughborough University, a pathway which would lead to a commercially stable ‘afterlife’ following his passion of helping people reach their potential. After a testimonial year in 2008 with Leicestershire, Jeremy went to work with Shane Warne in the inaugural Indian Premier League with the Rajasthan Royals. They went on to win with the cheapest team at $67million, with a team that was formed from scratch. His core role was to develop a brand, team culture and a set of organisational values and use their profile as a competitive advantage as other teams, and media, were looking at individual stars and their price tags.

The role at South Africa Cricket as performance coach followed 2 months later through working with Graeme Smith in the IPL and his relationship with Mickey Arthur. The brief was to see where the environment could be improved, as they wanted to be the best Test playing nation in the world. In recounting this role, Jeremy noted that “…I was initially a bit of a performance detective in the team, speaking to players one on one, then gradually developed into a role to facilitate workshops, deliver 20 minute keynote team psychology sessions for players and also support Mickey and Graeme. The pressures of running the SA team are unique and I think they enjoyed having someone relatively objective with fresh ideas to help support that process…” Having beaten Australia at home [Aus] in the test series, a feat they hadn’t achieved in 26 years, the side were now ranked number 1, but Jeremy describes the success trap that followed “…what happened after that was there was a subtle, invisible but powerful change in the motivational culture of the team and it became very much about celebrating individuals, we’d already made it to number 1, they’d ticked that off, they needed something else that was renewable, they lost the very next series which was Australia in their [SA] back garden that started lots of discussion about the role, purpose and identity of the SA cricket team. That’s where I did lots of work, with other experts, on developing an emotional competitive advantage for SA, so this is used in their unique identity, story and history and just how SA had the opportunity of being not only the best cricket teams in the world, but also that they had an opportunity, more than any other sporting team in the world, to make an emotional impact on their country.” This was achieved by using various creative ideas including powerful stimulus videos and workshops to re-orientate the players to the idea that it was about what they could contribute to the team and how they could invest energy into the team so that they could impact their country rather than think about it in terms of statistics and how they could be number 1. Jeremy talks of how some of the ‘alpha males’ tested his loyalty out on his first tour against his home nation. Jeremy was no double agent and worked discreetly to help South Africa win their first tour of England in many years. He talked about the job of a sports psychologist and suggested, “it’s not to be prescriptive about what a team should be doing, or about creating dependency on our insights. We have to create ideas that the team can run with and build into their culture. My philosophy is to make myself redundant by enhancing the problem solving and leadership capabilities of the players I work with. They shouldn’t need me to be there to provide answers; I won’t be there on the pitch with them in the heat of battle.”

The attention naturally turned to the domain of sport psychology and Jeremy was quite precise and measured in his views on this matter, “…generally lots of academic psychologists go into sports teams desperate to prove what they know, what they should be doing is going in there demonstrating how much they care.” He expanded on this notion and suggested that “…it’s about listening, we know that every team is completely different, sports and teams differ in their cycles through a season, we have to be detectives in these environments, asking questions, we need to join the dots even before we open our mouths… they see your skill by how you are able to assimilate all the different strands that you have heard into quick high impact interventions.” I explore where this ability to understand information and processes about what people require has come from and he talks about people, “I think I’m fascinated by people, I have always been trusted by people who want to talk about their game. I’ve got that natural interest, I’ve been immersed in my performance as a player and working with so many different coaches, working through my own failings and successes and the different rises and falls of my own career, probably the turbulence of my own career, allowed me to spot patterns and then being able to work with lots of different coaches and teams gives you such a good perspective on things, see commonalties, any experts recognise patterns, my psych training was not as extensive as some professors, but my pattern recognition in elite performance settings was really key.”

The discussion about human qualities and the ability to empathise and care within high performance environments is clearly a defining characteristic of Jeremy and one that has seen his company work with some major organisations in the commercial world. He is the company Director of The Sporting Edge and the tone of his voice lifts when talking about the projects that they are currently involved in, “we work with professional sport teams and businesses in highly competitive markets, it’s born out of my belief that mind sets are exactly the same, high pressure sales teams have the same pressures of statistics and analysis, work life balance and expectations of someone managing a sports team. We work with lots of top corporate organisations such as BMW, BT and Deloitte, really exciting projects supporting leaders and their teams. We also support the League Managers Association, when managers are going through stressful times or transitions; they enjoy having someone external to bounce ideas off and to simplify their thinking.” The company has evolved through referrals and is built upon the importance of quality relationships that they have with their clients. I explore whether people are sometimes resistant on disclosing personal and intimate details of themselves during his work and he suggests that, “…some people do feel vulnerable discussing performance and fears about the future, but it’s those people that recognise this yet are very ambitious to achieve more that come and see us. We also have fun in our work and that’s also something that helps us build strong relationships too.”

In closing the interview I explore Jeremy’s thoughts on the biggest psychological factors that have been present across the very best people that he has worked with and he suggests that “they have a very very clear goal about what they want to achieve, a clear destination in mind and they are able to deselect things that don’t contribute to that goal, they are very focused. They also have the ability to look into their past and pull out episodes of resilience and success and look forward to really short term controllable goals that they can tick off to work towards their end game.” He also suggests that the training of practitioners interested in sport psychology need to deal with reality and not research, “…it’s not about how many books, theories and papers you’ve read, there’s only 1 person sat in front of you having a conversation, your library of knowledge may be brilliant, but the most relevant thing is about what the person is saying, I think sport psychologists need to get away from this ‘lecturing’ mode and listen to the coach or athlete in front of them as the expert. It’s then that special things happen, highly tailored strategies, blended with rigour which impacts the performer straight away.”

I finally explore what he thinks elite athletes, coaches and players want and need from sport psychologists, and his response perhaps illustrates a unique and precise portrayal of the man that I’ve just had the pleasure to interview over the last hour “I think that they want someone that understands them and is able to provide fresh ideas for them to solve their own problems. It’s the ownership of the problems that is key and the personal qualities that enable individuals to feel empowered.”

For more information on Jeremy Snape’s work visit www.thesportingedge.co.uk or follow him on twitter @thesportingedge

Martin Littlewood PhD is a specialist in applied sport psychology and youth development and the programme manager of the BSc (Hons) Science and Football in the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University.

THIS MONTH’S ARTICLES:
DARREN BURGESS: TEAM SPORTS TECHNOLOGY IN SPORTS SCIENCE – ARE WE SEEING THE BIG PICTURE?
PROZONE ANALYSIS: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MARCH
MARK NESTI: IDENTITY AND SPORT – FINDING MEANING IN TIMES OF CRISIS!
HOWARD HAMILTON: NETWORK MODELLING – AN APPROACH FOR CAPTURING CONTEXT AND SPACE IN FOOTBALL MATCH DATA