Sport-General

I was trying to think of nice by-lines for this blog and just before I thought of ‘Preparing for Real Competition’, the play on words, ‘Train Like a Locomotive’ came to me.

Train big, strong, powerfully.

I love such short, powerful sayings - you know, the kind you see dotted around the gym walls, designed to inspire and motivate.

A great use of such terms can be during the execution of skills. These cue words, which can be as simple as ‘drive’ or ‘push’, serve to focus attention and lead the effort.

When doing a bench press I’d think to ‘drive it through the ceiling’ - obviously, a fairly lofty goal, but it provides a solid directive.

I came up with another set of words - ‘roll, dash, hike, trim’ to key me into the actions needed to so a tack while sailing. Sailing’s a sport where there is a lot going on and then suddenly you have to execute a different skill. So, it can help to have these words to cue up the necessary actions in your mind just before doing it.

Go ahead and think now of a word that creates positive images or feelings in your mind that might help you with a specific task in your sport. You could ‘float like a butterfly’ or ’sting like a bee’, to quote boxing great Ali.

Here’s a list which might help:

To increase effort: Strong, Drive, Push, Explode, Pump, Kick, Lift, C’mon!

To focus skills and technique: Follow through, Strreeettch, Feel.

To settle and improve efficiency: Smooth, Relax, Steady, Breathe.

Cue words will help anchor your mind, but they’re personal, so choose a combination which will work best for yourself.

The impact of cue words may also wear off after a while, so it’ll pay once a year to decide whether a refresh is needed.

For a few years you’ve been able to download and listen to MP3 audio tracks that take you through a running or gym session. Now, with the increasing development of applications for the iPhone there are a whole lot more ‘wow’ tools for athletes and coaches to help you plan, carry out and record sessions. Here are the main players.

PumpOne.com has hundreds of workouts, including exercises for strength training, weight loss, flexibility and endurance that you can download to your iPhone or iPod. There are plenty of sample videos on the site which give you a feel for the product. Once downloaded, press play on device and the video will guide you in a series of exercises. You watch, then pause and do it yourself. There’s no sport-specific workouts, but if you’re fairly new to formalized training you may well value the opportunity to be lead through hotel room, core strength, swiss ball, pilates or yoga routines.

iTrain.com has over 200 workouts in their library by personal trainers plus Olympic swimming Champion Natalie Coughlin. Each of the categories of cycle, treadmill, climber, boxing, swimming, stretching, sculpting and cardio has a long sample you can download and try yourself. Tracks are in MP3 format and run from 20-60 mins. There’s no video, so you have to use your imagination a little more than with PumpOne.

RunKeeper.com allows you to track your runs and map and view your progress in your running history. The App uses the built-in GPS in the 3G iPhone to track your performance. You’d wear your iPhone on your arm and you can cycle, or dance or whatever with it. There’s no mapping, per se, on the phone, but you can send your data to the website to save and map it there.

iFitness is available through the iTunes App Store for just $2.49 and has over 110 fully illustrated exercises with accompanying text. You can make a list of favorite exercise to create your own custom routine. You can use preset routines that their experts have made for reaching different goals. The exercises, illustrated with written descriptions are organized by the muscles they target.

iMapMyRun and iMapMyRide are powered by the popular site MapMyRun.com and, clearly, uses the iPhone’s GPS to track your outdoor activities. You can record distance, speed, pace, etc. and load the data back to their website or view it on Google Maps. With Google having just released the iPhone version of Google Maps, expect the application to be upgraded to allow you to view your run overlayed on google maps on the iPhone. However , at this stage you can’t change your tunes and run the App. Arrg!

TrailGuru is another iPhone App and does much the same thing as iMapMyRun, only better, according to users. You can also post your activity to the www.trailguru.com site and boast about your endurance. The developer updates the App often. It’s free too.

GymGoal Lite on the iPhone is another App available through the iTunes Store that provides prompting for your weigh training, but, significantly, also allows you to record what you’ve done - reps, sets and weight. You can also create a custom routine in which it’s real easy to add, delete or re-order exercises. There’s an inbuilt list of 210 illustrated exercises and you can add your own. Just don’t sweat too much on the phone. GymGoal Lite is $5.99.

iWorkOut , for your $2.99, gets you a pretty slick App featuring 100+ exercise videos narrated by a certified fitness and exercise expert. You can sample the videos on YouTube and you’ll see they focus on technique, which is good if you need help in this area. However, for regular athletes, it lacks the session recording functionality of GymGoal Lite.

Fit Phone is just a little more pricey at $5.99, but the developers boast about its recording and reporting ability, which are of most use to regular athletes. You can set your own workouts, add new exercises, enter actual weights lifted, and even email the data to your coach. Worth a look.

The summary: If you want something that tells you what to do, review PumpOne.com ; if you want something that will help you keep track of your gym workouts, check out GymGoal Lite or Fit Phone .

The term cohesiveness has long been associated with the amount of ‘togetherness’ displayed by a team both on and off the field. Team cohesion is commonly defined as a dynamic process that is reflected in the tendency of a group to remain united in the pursuit of its goals and objectives (Carron 1982).

There are two dimensions within cohesion:

1. A task dimension which reflects a team’s ability to work together to achieve a goal, and
2. A social dimension which reflects the degree to which team members like each others’ company.

Research conducted by Lenk (1969) found that social cohesion was not an important component in achieving a successful performance in elite rowing, i.e., the rowers do not have to like one another for top performance. Sometimes, that’s just as well!

However, when contemplating the larger majority of active athletes (i.e., the non-elite) social cohesion may well prove to be quite important.

Performance success will facilitate feelings of greater cohesion and satisfaction. Similarly, cohesion itself will also result in a greater sense of satisfaction.

Satisfaction is how an individual feels about their participation in a team. If an individual has a high degree of satisfaction they are more likely to feel good about themselves and their participation and want to continue participating.

If a crew lacks the ability to gain satisfaction substantially through its performance in the short term, cohesion may provide the level of satisfaction required to maintain motivation. Thus, as performance improvements due to training have an opportunity to emerge, this reinforces the positive feelings gained from achievement.

Over time, encouraging participation at novice levels will increase both the size and standard of the pool of athletes from which elite squads are selected. In this light the development of social cohesion at a non-elite level may well be extremely important to any sport.

What Makes a Team Cohesive?

A ‘crew concept’ is essential for cohesion to develop and stems from five key issues (Williams 1986):

1. Proximity: close personal contact between team members that facilitates interaction.
2. Distinctiveness: team members perceiving themselves as a unit and as different from others outside the crew.
3. Similarity: team members perceptions of themselves as having similar attitudes , aspirations, commitment and abilities.
4. Goals and rewards: emphasis is placed on groups performances and rewards rather than individuals of sub-groups.
5. Team structure: individuals should understand, accept and enthusiastically undertake their role in the team and be aware and conform to team norms (acceptable behaviors).

As the definition of team cohesion states, it is a dynamic process and implicitly therefore is capable of change, growth, modification and improvement.

How to Create Team Cohesion

Coaches can facilitate the development of social cohesion within their teams by:

• Opening communication channels between themselves and their charges and between team members.

• Seek input when making decisions and address conflict when it arises.

• Develop pride and a collective identity by setting realistic goals with the team and gain their commitment by involving them in the process.

• Develop common expectations of behavior (e.g., arriving on time or early to training).

• Acknowledge personal contributions by stressing the importance of each individual’s role. This acknowledgment will also enhance the individual’s motivation and commitment.

• Conduct periodic meetings at which team members can air their grievances and resolve conflict.

• Use senior members to help implement change where necessary.

• Discuss the positive aspect of a performance before the negatives.

• Reinforce distinctiveness by training in a common uniform and interacting socially as well as at training.

• Avoid early failures where possible.

• Avoid excess team substitutions.

• Avoid clique formation (negative alliances) by randomly assigning individuals to groups for off-field training.

In conclusion, team cohesion can be use as a tool by coaches, organizers and PE teachers to maintain participation in sport. The development of cohesion takes on even greater significance if the team has begun a season with poor performance and gains little satisfaction from their results.

If the individual feels a sense of belonging and has committed themselves to team goals, satisfaction will also be gained from the process of combined effort. In turn, this provides a source of satisfaction and the subsequent feelings of worth can provide motivation to carry on. Therefore, social cohesion is important at a non-elite level in order to provide a solid base for elite athletes to develop within.

If you’re interested in learning about formal strategies to develop team cohesion have a look at Developing Team Unity and Leadership.