Should All Coaches Be Analysts? Robert Carroll
As a practicing Performance Analyst, I have always found that there is something peculiar about the role. Most other sports science personnel such as Strength and Conditioning, Psychology, and Nutritionists are invariably left to their own devices. These practitioners, while consulting with the Head Coach or Manager, often present their plans, goals and findings directly to the athletes and not through the coaches. In my experience, performance analysts don’t have the same level of interaction with players. The job is more of an interpreter, they act as the eyes and ears for the coaches, pass the information onto them, who in turn deal with the athletes directly. This is somewhat understandable, while the other sports science personnel need to have a deep understanding of the physical and emotional demands of the sport, the minutiae of the technical and tactical elements are something they do not need to concern themselves with. This often means their skills are easier to transfer from sport to sport. The principles of what they practice remain the same, they are simply applying their skills under a new set of
sports specific demands. The analyst on the other hand must understand the coach’s philosophy, the game plan and both the technical and tactical requirements of the sport. This sports specific understanding is much harder to transfer. The role of an analyst often involves more interaction with the coaches than the athletes. In a recent study on the role of performance analysts within elite football, 72.9% of respondents said they did not lead the feedback to players (Wright et al., 2013). This is not something I have found with the other sports science disciplines. For an analyst to have a similar working relationship (as other sports science disciplines) with the athletes, they would need to be a coaching expert in that sport, understand the philosophy of the coach so they are not sending mixed messages and they must possess all the technical expertise required to fill the role of an analyst. If you are such a skilled coach it is more likely that you would be applying your skills as a coach and not an analyst. (continued on pg. 10)
Interview with Mike Christie In his role as Performance Intelligence and Analysis Advisor for Own The Podium, Mike Christie talks to SIRC’s Debra Gassewitz on the relevance and importance of performance analysis in high performance sport.
Practical Applications at the Olympics
Click here to listen to the full interview.
What is the greatest benefit of using performance analysts? … providing both the coach and the athlete objective data. The athlete & coach will be able to remember about 30% of the actual performance, what performance analysis does is answers that other 70% …the data doesn’t lie > Dartfish software showing Wengen Men’s Downhill World Cup Hermann Maier and Erik Guay overlay to compare lines between the two skiers.
Click here to listen to the story. 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games – Maelle Ricker, snowboarding The coach wanted the confidence that the athlete was on track (in fact leading) before the mistake was made, the video analysis provided the confidence to the coach and athlete that they were on proper form. “they wanted that little bit of reassurance, that objective data” Click here to listen to the story.
... the biggest impact for “performance analysts tends
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With our Olympic and Paralympic teams we are in this world of Big Data, being able to manage that is a challenge… [performance analysts] make sure we have the relevant piece of data that is going to impact performance in a positive way.
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2006 Torino Olympic Winter Games MJen’s Super G – Canada’s first time having a performance technology strategy at the Olympics.
to be in the daily training environment... — mc
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HP SIRCuit Summer 2013
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