The Two Ways of Improving Sports Performance

The industry of coaching, sports and schools is about improving performance. Of individuals, and teams.

There are two ways of doing this: the formula is simple

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT = REDUCTION (of error and inefficiency) + INCREASE (of creativity and magic)

Much of the culture of sport in Britain is focussed on the former.  Performers are measured against various criteria, and their level of failure is noted.  A percentage of failed passes: a statistic for shots on target, or carries made, tackle count, or centre passes completed.  All of these start with an ideal performance, 100%, and measure the level by which this target is missed.  Unacceptable statistics almost always result in players being dropped.  Coaches talk of the need for greater effort, much "hard work" to be done before the next game or tournament, increasing accuracy.  Much of the focus of coaching is about improving accuracy and reducing error.

However, in many games it is not the team that makes the fewer errors that wins.  It is the team that has the higher number of moments of magic.  Individual genius, creativity that opens up the defence, completes a sublime pass, leaves a defender for dead, of scores from a low percentage shooting position.  "Goal of the Month" and "Try of the Season" do not feature the most efficient and error free passages of play.  They feature the most exciting, unpredictable, creative plays.  The ones that take the breath away.

Players do not love their moments of efficiency.  They do not play to have superior stats.  They play for the opportunity to participate in something that takes them out of the ordinary.  Avoiding mistakes is ordinary.  Sport offers the opportunity for the extraordinary.

So, if creativity is both a feature of competitive success, and the excitement and satisfaction of sport, why is it not the overwhelming priority of coaches of all games at all levels? What proportion of coaching sessions is aimed at producing the creative moments.  The ones that win matches?  Coaching the players who are going to produce the match winning moments on Saturday.

Unopposed rugby is a staple training activity for teams at all levels.  And yet no one ever learned to be more creative through this process.  The most creative players are required to stifle any such inclination in this type of activity: the powerful ball carriers run in a straight line and go to ground, the fly halves pass, the wings catch, run straight and go to ground.  No team develops the capacity to develop genius through these activities.

Creative teams and players are not established through drills, predictable practices and unopposed team runs.  Whilst all those mechanisms may have a place in the cocktail of practice activities, their importance should never exceed the pursuit of the magic moments. But how many coaches, and schools, actively coach creativity as a priority?  Yet every Saturday evening, they celebrate the creative, game changing moments, and the players who provide them

Efficiency is easy to coach.  Creativity is much more difficult. The challenge for the architects of school coaching programmes is to find a way of encouraging all coaches, in all sports, at all ability levels, to spend a substantial part of every week's practice on encouraging and developing genius.  It's much more fun than cultivating Soviet-style efficiency.  Try sport with the shackles off.