Coaching has evolved, and so has how we develop coaches. As director of coach development at Sport Singapore, Troy Engle has tried to set up a new approach to developing both coaches and the coaching culture in the city-state. He joins us on this week’s GAINcast to talk about his project, his philosophy of developing coaches, and the challenges of coaching across cultures. Read more
Lachlan Penfold is one of those coaches that has been at the top in multiple sports. In the past few decades he has worked with professional clubs and athletes in the NBA, NRL, AFL, Super Rugby, Rugby 7s, Olympic softball, javelin, baseball, and much more. Currently he is the director of performance for the defending champions Melbourne Storm of the National Rugby League. With most guests on the GAINcast we talk about their coaching journey and then focus on a key point of interest. Lachlan’s journey has been so diverse that on this episode we focus entirely on the journey itself, with a step-by-step look at the things he learned along the way. Read more
Europe has long been the epicenter of track and field. With the European Championships taking place last week, it’s a good time to take a look at whether that is still the case. On this week’s episode of the podcast we recap the highlights from the meet, which countries are on the rise, and how Europe still stacks up against the rest of the world. Read more
Every June, GAIN brings together world-class practitioners from a variety of sports. In addition to the presentations and practical sessions, this year we had a roundtable discussion on coaching Olympic champions, with panelists from Fiji rugby, snowboard, USA women’s hockey, and USA women’s basketball. We recorded the discussion and are sharing it in its entirety on this week’s GAINcast. Read more
Any coach with an ounce of experience knows that coaching isn’t just about the methods; it’s also about how you put them into practice. That’s the art of coaching, our June site theme. Throughout the month 10 contributors helped put together 2 new videos, 4 new podcasts, and 8 great articles. Below you’ll find links to all our new resources and some highlights from our archive on the topic. As always, become a Plus Member to make sure you get access to all of the vast resources on the site. But before we look at the resources, I wanted to share two key takeaways from this month. Read more
Every sport has its own training culture, and it is a difficult balancing act to try and implement your plan without alienating the status quo. After returning to hockey, strength coach Matt Price of the Los Angeles Kings has taken many small steps to fit his ideas into the sport’s existing framework. After four years, the small steps add up into a cultural shift. Price joined us on this week’s podcast to discuss his approach to training, loading, and shares examples from some of the methods he uses with the Kings. Read more
Jamaica is know around the world for the speed it produces, but their sprinters are not the only powerful athletes coming from the island. In recent years, Jamaica throwers have emerged as dominant forces in the shot put and discus. Coach Julian Robinson has helped lead the way, with his discus throwers sweeping gold and silver at the recent Commonwealth Games. On this episode he joins us to talk about the growth of Jamaica throwing, the throws culture, influences, and his own philosophy of training. Read more
After several months of looking at training methods and exercises, for the March theme we focused instead on culture. The role of culture in training cannot be denied, but while we acknowledge its importance, we rarely look at the topic in much depth. We hoped to change that this month by bringing together new input from John Pryor, Chris Gallagher, Vern Gambetta, Jonathan Marcus, Steve Myrland, Nick Hill, Craig Pickering, Nick Garcia, Clay Erro and more top coaches. Links to all the new resources, as well as some greatest hits on the topic from our archives, are included below. In reviewing all the new material again last weekend, I also pulled together a few key points from a month of discussing culture. Read more
For three decades, coach Dan Lange has been quietly doing his thing out in Los Angeles: producing champions across all four throwing events. He is the only American to have coached an Olympic champion in the hammer throw, yet most people have no idea who he is or how he trains. In this exclusive interview, we get Lange to discuss his career, his character-based approach to coaching, how to deal with egos, and more. Read more
If you want to learn about team culture you can look at examples from some of the most successful professional teams in the world. Or you can walk down to you local high school. Clay Erro is on example of that. You likely don’t know his name, but in nearly 40 years as a football and track coach in northern California he accumulated one of the top winning percentages of all time. And he did it through team culture. Read more
