Coaching Resources: The Playmaker’s Advantage
Coaching Resources: The Playmaker’s Advantage
Article by John Crampton - SNSW Director of High Performance
I have known Professor Len Zaichkowsky since 1985. To say he is a great friend of Australian sport is an understatement. Len was a Professor of Sport Psychology and Sport Pedagogy (teaching coaches) at Boston University, and now in retirement plays a significant role in working with technology developers and applied sport psychologists around the world.
Len and I like to talk about “sport psychology 2.0”. This refers to the movement of psychology applications in sport from a set of “talking therapies” to a hard science, complete with evidence based approaches and equipment usage protocols that help performers to better understand how they function and operate.
Len’s son Brian and family live in Sydney, so it doesn’t take much to twist his arm to pay a visit down under. Len’s current technology projects include working with the Neurotracker developers (https://neurotracker.net) and an app that he and colleague Peter Fadde have developed using “visual occlusion” to help train pitch recognition. We are working with Len & Peter to incorporate some of these technologies in the Learning Centre at BISP.
For those coaches particularly interested in the role that visual skills play in softball, and in where the industry is up to in training visual skills, we have included a review article written by Len and his colleagues.
Click here to download Len’s review article.
While we are talking about support reading, I would like to recommend you to Len’s newest book, “The Playmaker’s Advantage”, published by Simon & Schuster.
The publishers are promoting the book by saying:
Discover how to improve your mental game—the next frontier in sports training—no matter your age or experience and become the Playmaker or the decisive general on the court or field.
Coaches search for it. Parents dream of it. Fans love it. Athletes want it.
The Playmaker on any sports team possesses it: an elusive, intangible quality combining anticipation, perception, and decision-making skills. This quality raises their game above the competition and allows them to pass when no one else can, anticipate the movement of opponents, and avoid costly mental mistakes, thus holding the team together.
Using today’s technology and tools, it is now possible to understand, assess, and train this sixth sense rather than just hope it magically appears. Now, for the first time, cognitive science research is revealing the secrets of the Playmaker’s keen sense of awareness. Just as tests of speed, strength, and agility have provided a baseline of physiological biomarkers, coaches can now capture cognitive metrics including attention, pattern recognition, anticipation, and the ability to take quick, decisive action during the chaos of competition.
The Playmaker’s Advantage is a groundbreaking book that will educate athletes of all ages about this essential creative capability in an accessible, easy to understand method.
My comment would be that you will find this book an interesting read as it is comprised of a series of interviews with elite coaches, talking about key issues surrounding decision making. I have a version on my ipad, but if you still prefer a “real book”, you can get both hard back and softback versions. Chase Simon & Schuster online for more details.
You can see a preview of the book by going to:
A preview like this gives you access to 30+ pages of the entire book. You will know whether it is for you pretty quickly.
Len will be in Australia again in the near future as he and I are both working with the military on projects with their rapid deployment special forces groups. We will work on getting him in front of softball coaches during that next visit.
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