Tips & Advice

• • "New Year?; take a step back, consider your time and value it. Avoid being loyal to situations and people that waste your effort, authenticity and peace of mind".

• • "Smart, successful, experienced coaches and performers sometimes work things out long before the research / scientific studies are done: consider their wisdom, even without the confirmation".

• • "If you are not practising your new way you will be continuing to ingrain your old way"

• • “ Start with scoring opportunities / coaching, then coach attack before defence. Primary player question - ‘can I score?’

• • "Don`t break your body in training for your performance goals"

• • "The body was designed to move, to adapt and respond. Recurring aches and pains usually arise in one of three ways: mechanical injury (e.g. a fall); repetitive micro-trauma (e.g. inappropriate equipment); or imbalances in the body's kinetic chain of movement (e.g. unbalanced core training can cause lower-back pain)".

• • "Injury prevention - biomechanics, stability control, muscle strength balance, anatomical alignment, range of motion: generic `fitness` is not the same thing."

• • "Beliefs on `fitness` can be as strong as religion, but often the strength of opinion is inversely proportional to strength of the (scientific) evidence."

• • " `Learning styles` are not supported by scientific evidence: Contrary to popular opinion, people do not perform any better in their `preferred` learning style, rather they perform better in the learning style that best matches the material being taught. People are poor judges of what form of learning will be best for them, most often a mixture of learning styles is best. What you need to do is match the material to be learned to the presentation format, not `you`".

• • "The significant things are hard to see and hard to coach...so many take refuge in the incidental things that are easy to see and quick to modify"

• • “A man [or coach] should look for what is, and not what he thinks it should be.” (Albert Einstein)

• • "Prioritise, train smart, train the transferables, train hard."

• • "Most goals in football are preceded by a straight-line sprint without the ball and the majority of goals scored in the second half of football are a result of high-intensity movements (jumps, straight-line sprints)"

• • "Do what intimidates you"

• • "Success is not owned, its is leased...pay the rent"

• • "Applying a cognitive strain can produce an enhanced training effect without adding any additional physiological stress - if you stress your brain at the same time as your body, then, when you remove the mental stress, the physical effort seems easier. (So, doing a moderate workout—anything up to 80 to 85 percent of maximum effort—that’s the session to have a cognitive task to work your brain at the same time)".

• • "Preparation; analysis, training, evaluation...Preparation...."

• • “A good plan violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” (George Patton)

• • "Coaching is about problem solving." - "Problems in performance rarely fall into a single box (psychology or fitness etc.) but are sports specific, individual, multi and inter -disciplinary."

• • "Correlation (link) is not the same as `cause`."

• • "Be skeptical - beware oft-repeated advice not rooted in evidence; myths are often spread through shoddy reporting and writing on the internet and via rationalisations often associated with media figures".

• • "A missing link : injury rehab - `sports specific re-conditioning` - return to high performance sport."

• • "The new thing you are looking for may just be the old thing you have avoided or at least not done enough of to date..."

• • "If you think your fitness is holding back your skiing you are doing it poorly- Developing your skiing is about developing your nerves, not your muscles." - "If your legs hurt during or after skiing you are doing something bad!"

• • "Challenge `accepted `practice; asking an impertinent question is partway to a pertinent improvement."

• • "Bridge the gaps between the latest evidence, the theory and practice."

• • Sports Biomechanics; the science of technique and skills, is the `Cinderella` of coaching sciences and coach education. Disrespected, mistreated, poorly understood and perceived as a threat. Badly taught, dumbed-down, and misused; a vocabulary hijacked in attempt to `legitimise` methodology, systems and style opinions that were not originally based on science, or scientific evidence.

• • "You need to understand the why to accept the how"

• • "Quality education, teaching and coaching is not regimented or rigid and coach education is not about new drills (drill is what you do in the military). It takes years to educate and develop a teacher/mentor, from someone who is already educated, has a strong background, in-depth understanding and real interest in being an educator. Then, they need varied experiences.

• • Take a good sports performer and give them a few weeks of instructor courses; what have you got? - an ex-performer, whose an embryo instructor with minimum information and skills for their new role.

• • Take coaches with system qualifications and experience, have them lead a training system; what have you got? - ex-coaches and an embryo sports training system".

• • " `Keeping it simple / avoiding over complication`, when done in coach education limits the potential development of new coaches - Is it to done for sake of the educator not the recipient?"

• • "The challenge is that the ideal principles of the textbook often contradict what we think we "know" from a lifetime of real-world experiences. Learning `physics` is hard because what we think we already understand and may be unable to connect a new piece of information with our preconceptions (prior knowledge not merely misconceptions or wrong ideas). You have to have some knowledge and ability to apply that information [incorrectly] in order to misunderstand things. Thus evidence of misunderstanding is significant, not a mere mistake to be corrected".

• • "Our `reasoning` is often `rationalising`, to support current belief - behaving like a lawyer winning our “case” with (potentially biased) arguments. The biases include "confirmation bias," in which we give greater heed to evidence and arguments that bolster our beliefs, and "disconfirmation bias," in which we expend disproportionate energy trying to refute views and arguments that don`t support our beliefs. In other words we have other goals besides accuracy and truth - including confidence and security in beliefs and protecting one's sense of self and history."

1. Relate: Create, strengthen and manage relationships with your team members

2. Coach: Enable others to be the best they can be

3. Energise: Give hope, build momentum and share your passion

4. Innovate: Create a community that is willing and able to innovate

5. Thrive: Be at your best more of the time

6. Direct: Set the direction of travel, making it clear who is driving what

7. Execute: Deliver on promises, on time, in style and through others

Dave Murrie