When it comes to performance, the current generation of athletes are, on the whole, better informed and more inquisitive than their predecessors.
292 Performance sat down with Leaders in Sport to discuss how we can create the right training environments with the athletes and groups of athletes we are working with.
What can a practitioner do when an athlete doesn’t ask ‘why’?
“There’s a few options,” says Ben Rosenblatt, a physical performance coach who has worked with the England men’s football team, GB and England women’s hockey teams and Olympic athletes since the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.
Asses the why of the athlete
“Do you know them well enough to understand why they don’t want to know? If it’s because they just want to get told, they’ve got trust, and they don’t want to know ‘why’, they just want to crack on with it and say ‘go on then, give us the programme’, I’ll commit to it, we’ll give it a crack, and then afterwards we can work out how well that worked.
“Do they not want to know ‘why’ because they’ve disengaged? If so, then you might just see them floating around a session or trying to disrupt others.
“The other one is that they’re just not that interested in physical conditioning and preparation because not everyone is. Most people take up sport or play high level sport not because they love doing press-ups and sit-ups, it’s because they love their sport.
“So you’ve got to try and understand the reason why they’ve disengaged and you’re also trying to find out, as a consequence, how they’re best going to receive information. So you can just ask some really simple questions to ascertain that. If it were you and me working together I’ll ask: ‘what’s the best way that we communicate with each other? What do you need from me? what’s important to you physically? what’s worked in the past?
Adapt communication
“You might say: ‘I just need a programme and to crack on’. That’s absolutely fine and that’s what you’re going to get. But then we can also ask the athlete ‘Can we review it every six weeks?’ This will give you both the opportunity to learn more about each other.”
The conversation takes a turn into nudge theory, which is defined by Imperial College London as: ‘based upon the idea that by shaping the environment, also known as the choice architecture, one can influence the likelihood that one option is chosen over another by individuals.’
“This is where you bleed into the gamification of training and environmental nudges to encourage people to engage in stuff they might not necessarily want to. The basic principle is called EAST, which is making things: easy, accessible, social and timely. If you can make anything align with any of those four things, if you can make something really easy to engage in, really accessible, so it’s at the right time and the right place, it’s part of the social environment and it’s timely, it’s at the time when they should be doing it, then you’ll absolutely get the behaviour change.
Dr Ben Rosenblatt, NUDGE Theory
“This is where you bleed into the gamification of training and environmental nudges to encourage people to engage in stuff they might not necessarily want to,” says Rosenblatt, who in 2021 visited the Behavioural Insights Team (commonly known as the ‘Nudge Unit’), which previously operated under the auspices of the UK Government but is now run independently. It has informed his approach, as have visits to University College London, the University of Bedfordshire, and the Design Museum in London.
Returning to nudge theory, Rosenblatt says: “The basic principle is called EAST, which is making things: easy, accessible, social and timely.
“If you can make anything align with any of those four things, if you can make something really easy to engage in, really accessible, so it’s at the right time and the right place, it’s part of the social environment and it’s timely, it’s at the time when they should be doing it, then you’ll absolutely get the behaviour change.”
NUDGE Theory Case Study
He cites an example from his time with the England men’s football team. “One problem was how we get the players to go in the pool immediately after training on a particular day with the physical performance team. Using nudge principles we decided to nick the players trainers and put them in the pool area! This meant, to walk back to the hotel, they had to go to the pool first! We also put recovery shakes in there and scattered some balls and some inflatables in the pool. So when they went to get their trainers, it was easier to take a shake and then jump in the pool with their mates rather than leave! They ended up staying in for half an hour or so.
Gamification can be a useful tool in training environments. “If it’s a group that does want to engage a little bit more, like the hockey girls, then you do things like have a synchronised swimming competition. Again, if you’re saying we’re going to do a pool recovery session, then the players will come in knackered, they’ll go up and down the pool for 10 minutes and get out. If we say we’re having a synchronised swimming competition and you’ve got 15 minutes to come up with a routine, they’re in there for 40 minutes working out what the routine is, hanging around the pool to play afterwards etc. Those are ways you can get players that just aren’t interested or who don’t want to know. Rather than giving them full autonomy, you create an environmental nudge that means that they have to dive in there literally.
“There’s other ways of doing it. One other idea is to play with the schedule. OK, so let’s say you’re trying to introduce a new form of training to the group (like strength work). Rather than make the session an additional training session, make it part of the original training session. So if they’re coming into the gym before going onto the grass, start with a familiar warm up, something they’re comfortable with and then you introduce the new activity as a competition. If it’s aligned to something you want them to get better at and want them to improve at; because it’s a competition everyone’s automatically engaged in it.
“Again, this is more relevant to athletes who aren’t as engaged with their physical preparation. But if you do a familiar warm up and there’s some little competition then they’re automatically going to engage in it. If it’s aligned to the physical outcome that you want, then they’re going to improve! The best way I’ve found of organising competition for maximum engagement is 1 1v1 competition in a team v team scenario… essentially you stack up points for your team by winning individual competitions against your opponents.
“You can then start to make it fun. We had an ongoing jump squat competition throughout the Euros where the players would compete for boxing belts based on how fast they were moving the bar. Training intensity and enjoyment went through the roof! All the athletes have noticed is that they’ve had a bit of fun and they’ve enjoyed themselves whilst being really physical. But if you start stacking that up over a course of two, three, four or five weeks, you’ve got a really strong physical conditioning response there.”
For more information on our coaching and training principles, more literature we use or how we use the NUDGE theory at 292 Performance, please contact us below:
