Training Courses and Workshops

Available by arrangement for governing bodies, sport development agencies, and sport clubs:

Advanced Communication Skills for Sports Coaches and Leaders

The techniques of NLP will allow coaches to gain control over vital areas of their behaviour so as to directly enhance the effectivenes of their coaching, whether for peak performance or for safe and effective activities for young people:

1. Understanding the forms of communicating that consistently elicit the required responses from athletes and pariticants in sport programs.
2. Tools that allow coaches to manage their own psycho-physiological states (and therefore their behaviour) in pressure situations.

The problem with traditional sport psychology approaches is that they are 'delivered' separately from normal coaching processes and interactions and they frequently rely on cognitive behavioural models that meet with resistance on the part of the athlete. The athlete is told what to do and how to do it - what they don't do now that they should do, or what they do now and shouldn't. Or worse, the athlete is taken through the rigmarole of a SMART goal setting process by a sport psychologist, with little engagement on the part of the athlete. These behavioural approaches will always be limited because they do not take into account the conscious and unconscious processes occurring within the athlete or player. The uniqueness of the NLP approaches is not only that they can be integrated into normal coaching interactions but that they engage directly with the unconscious processes of the athlete to create instant rapport and highly effective communication.

We integrate the crucial self-regulation and communication skills offered by neuro-linguistic programming at all levels of the coach education process, giving coaches the power to work effectively with a greater range of participants and athletes and the ability to control difficulty groups, to motivate, inspire and intill confidence at all levels of the sport continuum.

Coaching for Performance Success

At the core of our programmes lies the development of the four essential components of successful coaching:

• Coaching Values
• Coaching Philosophy
• Self-Regulation
• Communication Skills.

Most coach education systems do not consider these crucial elements of coaching behaviour and only pay 'lip-service' to communication skills. In the absence of these, it is left to sport psychology to pick up the pieces of failed coach-athlete relationships, and poor levels of motivation and confidence in coaches and athletes alike. However, traditional approaches in sport psychology appear to have had limited success in delivering the kinds of positive changes that are required in athletes and coaches in order to translate training effort into championship success.

Combing the best of Sport Psychology with tools and techniques of neuro-linguistics (link), hypnosis and coaching science, Life Performance Coaching can have a real impact on the maximisation of athlete potential when effectively delivered within the ongoing coaching process, rather than as an 'add on' delivered by outside specialists. As coaches are given practical, easy-to-learn tools for creating more confident, consistent, and coachable athletes, they too learn to maximise their own effectiveness in day-to-day training and in high pressure competitive environments.
Our coach education programmes aim to give coaches a sound understanding of these powerful strategies, so that they are able to easily and elegantly incorporate them into leadership by example and through the conscious use of language patterns that challenge self-imposed limitations - in themselves and their athletes.

Example Techniques

• Communication Model - explains how we process the information that comes to us from the environment. In building our internal representation of an event, we filter, (delete, distort and generalise) information that comes to us. So for example it is common for a swimmer to make the generalisation that one poor performance makes them a poor swimmer. The communication model demonstrates that we delete, distort, and generalise by using certain internal processing filters: meta-programmes, values, beliefs, attitudes, decisions, and memories.
• Motivation - While most athletes will say they are driven by winning, most coaches are surprisingly unaware of the deeper reasons motivating some athletes And yet, in order to gain the leverage needed to change a swimmers behaviour, it is necessary to understand what really motivates them. Through an understanding of language patterns and use of the type of questioning known as values elicitation it is possible to obtain this kind of information.
• Well Formed Outcomes - much more powerful than the goals and objectives with which coaches are familiar, well-formed outcomes adhere to the following conditions: stated in the positive; within the control of the subject; defined and evaluated according to sensory based evidence; constructed to preserve the positive by-products of the present state; appropriately contextualised to fit the external ecology. Through the use of powerful and specific questioning, it is possible to guide others into the generation of well-formed outcomes.
• Anchoring - An anchor is a stimulus that creates a response in either oneself or another person: it is, in essence, any representation (internally or externally generated) which triggers another representation. The triggered experience can be positive or negative and it is possible to collapse negative anchors and to generate positive, resourceful anchors.
• Rapport - It seems to be the case that people who are like each other, like each other and if we are attempting to change another person, it is necessary to get their help in the process. Establishing rapport seems to be a natural tendency for most people with a certain range of people. When rapport does not come naturally, it is essential to know and use the skills of matching, pacing and leading to create rapport consciously.
• Persuasion - It can be understood that communication between coach and athlete frequently involves the coach selling an idea to the athlete. Whether this is the idea of raising the standard of training, changing technique, increasing commitment or improving nutrition that coach is persuading the player or athlete to adopt a (permanent) change in behaviour. Often such a change is short-lived, if undertaken at all. Through the use of specific language patterns such as nominalisations, presuppositions, embedded commands, analogue marking, or negative commands, it is possible to by-pass conscious resistance and to engage the athletes own resources to cause the change.

The models, techniques and strategies employed by effective practitioners of NLP can be taught at a variety of levels from introductory certification to full mastery. We can construct a programme to incorporate these levels within your coach education programme to ensure that the highest level coaches gained full expertise in the operation these powerful tools.

In addition we offer two programs specifically designed for sport clubs:

• Peak Performance Secrets - the 4'C's of Success
• Find Your Flow - Getting into the Zone with Hypnosis

To find out more, contact:
T:  08456 343 153    M: 07941 505016
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