Editorial

What's in a number?I recently had the opportunity to attend the 2017 UK Coaching Summit in Northern Ireland. One of the sessions which stuck out for me was called 'Educating coaches to develop young people's life skills: informing coach education' by Dr Ceri Bowley (University of South Wales). You can see his presentation slides (Ceri was excellent 'live' by the way), and the other sessions' slides, by clicking on the link below under 'UK Coaching Summit Presentations' (funny that). Question for you: what percentage of grassroots footballers in the UK will play football in the English Premier League (EPL)? Not sure  €_ okay, I'll make it multi-choice: 5%, 3%, 1% or 0.1%? I'll give you the answer in a moment. It's fair to say even I was surprised at how low it was - 0.0017%. Now, I'm not picking on football here, because I think we know that give or take a percentage point, the conversion rates of grassroots to elite for all sports will always be low - it's not called elite sport for nothing. But the question the number 0.0017 posed for me was: 'How well do sports' current development pathways (player and coach) reflect the needs of all the participants who aren't on a pathway to being elite?' No multi-choice this time.  Brett Reid, Community Coaching Consultant"The road to wisdom is always under construction"UK Coaching Summit presentations  Canadian sport needs quality controlTo preface, there are A LOT of folks doing A LOT of good in the name of sport in this country.    Can you coach winning? (video) [MoreGold Performance Coaching]  Coaching behaviours frameworkWe have all had inspirational people in our lives, whether it was our parents, siblings, or perhaps a teacher from school.   [SportscoachUK]7 principles of neuroscience every coach should knowBack in the mid-1990s when I was an undergrad, the core text of my neuroscience curriculum was  'Principles of Neural Science'  by Eric Kandel, James Schwartz and Thomas Jessell. [yourbrainhealth.com]  7 tips for a great half-time talkLooking back to half-time in the 2005 European Champions League final, with Liverpool 3-0 down to AC Milan, captain Steven Gerrard was distraught and ready to concede defeat. [Soccer Coach Weekly]  Emotional intelligence: Applied Practice for Sports CoachesPositive mindset allows performance levels to increase because it facilitates direction and focus.   [believperform.com]