SA Hockey High-Performance Programme with Coaching Unity International

Media Release

The South African Hockey Association is pleased to announce an exciting two year initiative that will take South African hockey to the next level.  SA Hockey has teamed up with Coaching Unity International, to develop and fine tune the mental skills and team effectiveness of both the national men’s and women’s hockey teams.  Coaching Unity International’s, Michael Cooper and Tim Goodenough, the co-authors of “In the Zone with South Africa’s sports heroes”, will use their unique zoning pyramid to target and develop the 13 key mental skills that support high performance for the individuals in both teams. The High-Performance programme will be based on Executive Coaching; working individually with the players, the coaches and the managers and then collectively with the team as a whole.  The work will be a combination of the zoning pyramid and whatever is relevant and valuable to fast track the mental skills, performance ability and experience of the individual.

Both Mike and Tim are Executive Coaches that work in both the business and sports world and over the last 6 years they have chosen to specialise in working with elite athletes. Mike and Tim were involved with SA Rugby’s Castle High Performance Programme, and more recently Tim was the mental coach of the 2008 Super 14 Sharks. “We are very excited about the opportunity to co-create sustainable and meaningful shifts for South Africa’s elite hockey players. Having such a comprehensive and time-realistic high performance programme is rare and as such we are excited to work with such progressive sports administrators, coaches, managers and players,” says Tim Goodenough

From Mike and Tim at Coaching Unity:

Over  the last few years we have found the most effective recipe for working with teams is to work on a team level, an individual level and a coaching level, individually and collectively.  The programme that SA Hockey has initiated with Gregg and Jenny is exactly that.  Its intention is to develop all three of those levels: to create the next level of performance.

1.       We will work with the team over a series of workshops.

The team work will focus on group high performance fundamentals – When is this team at its best? What needs to happen to support that? Where are the next steps? What are the fundamentals of high performance teams and individuals? What are the behaviours that support the vision of this team, and what processes can we put in place to support each other and those behaviours.

2.       We will then work with the staff and players on a one-on-one basis. Each coach and player will get 5 one-on-one sessions.

Every person in a team is so unique and different, with different strengths and different challenges that having a personalised programme to accelerate an individual’s growth makes sense.  We want to help you move from 5th gear into 6th gear. And we have the tools, techniques and experience to do exactly that. 

However we can’t do that without the support and buy in of the administrators, managers, coaches and players.

Our philosophy when working with athletes:

Many athletes think of sports psychologists as Mental biokineticist’s, someone who can support your return from a mental injury (bad experience/slump in form) to get you functioning where you where pre-injury. As Executive Coaches we believe you - the athlete – have the answers and the insights into what is best for you, our job is to fast track that experience so that you become a better version of you, more effectively and more quickly.  We are more like Mental Personal Trainers, we want to help you develop sustainable mental skills, so that you don’t need us to perform at your peak, you will have all the skills and knowledge of what to do and how to do it yourselves.

The individual programme:

5 session player development programme

The programme is based on The Zoning Pyramid as found in “In The Zone” and its aim is to further develop the fundamental mental skills required for high performance, to equip athletes to play better more often and under more pressure.  It is the latest version of the programme that was used for the Castle (Rugby) High Performance Squad in 2006 and 2007 and for the Sharks Rugby Squad in 2008.

It includes:

Tools to manage pressure more effectively
Tapping into the passion of an individual’s vision to support high performance
Skill development to shut down external distractions
Managing emotions more effectively on the pitch (including when making mistakes, or having a ‘bad game’)
The skill of quickly and effectively shifting from on field-analysis (e.g. looking for the best pass) to on field-performance (e.g. striking the ball with the level of accuracy required for the best pass)
Other high performance mental skills

The programme is also open to any area of focus that the athlete wants to include.