There have been a couple of really illuminating articles about the new frontier of coaching being mind training and how it is done at AFL clubs:
The game in the brain
Mindfulness and meditation helped Richmond break their AFL premiership drought
It seems that the only clubs that are pursuing this in AFL up until last season were Richmond (3 seasons) and Adelaide (1st season). Other clubs have not done anything approaching the level of depth or integration with their footy program. To me, this makes sense. Neuroscience increasingly shows the power of our minds to affect and improve our performance. (If you haven't seen
Redesign my brain which was on ABC presented by Todd Sampson it is really eye opening and inspiring in this regard.)
I would like to see us trying to catch up with this. When I had the opportunity to raise this with the players recently they said they don't really do anything like this already, although the player had read about Richmond's pioneering of this and seemed interested.
Within the domain of mind-performance, it seems there are various sub-domains, including training group performance and momentum, a cutting edge new and as-yet-unproven area. One of the key areas for developing minds and having success is social connectedness. This reminds me of Kirk years ago declaring his love for his bloods brothers. It is also the area where Sydney gets a special mention in the first quoted article above:
"the second thing is social connectedness, and the clubs that can create the healthy connected cultures are 100 per cent going to be the ones that thrive.
�From the outside I see that Sydney always seems to have been a club that put culture first and has done it really, really well.
�You see them consistently up there, winning or in the top eight, top four, and that is testament to the fact that they realised early on that this stuff does matter.�
This last bit also rang true with what the players told me. Tippett made a point of praising the strong sociability of the club and how the players are all actually friends and socialise together. So some encouragement there. But I'm disappointed to hear we don't seem to be pursuing this more vigorously given the success record it is quickly assembling both in Australia and the US.
I say channel the Force we should, and use it the best we can!
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