You have all seen the pages with the "deliverables" as stated by the original agreement with Lt Col Bevan McDonald of the Australian Army.
You all know that we have divided to conquer putting together research, ideas, training programs, education pieces, and drills for the CF2 components. You have all heard me talk about publishable papers, an app, and evidence that it can/has produced a real impact on our target market. You have also no doubt been challenged to figure out how it is all going to come together and where the various bits fit together.
In all fairness, you should still be wondering what our "final deliverable solution" will look like.
I would like to introduce some terminologies and proposed structures based on some images and analogies that hopefully will begin to clear the fog.
Let's consider the by far more typical young athlete, who despite showing considerable talent, is not yet what we would call a "professional" athlete. Green in experience and approach, and with poor guidance, they may well have a "training age" (number of properly coached years of training) of 0, 1 or maybe 2.
If we introduce the idea of a foot locker to represent the "vehicle" that holds the various components of his professional (sporting life), it is probably pretty empty. Most of its belongings re strewn around his room or out in the shed (last year's spikes). This provides a nice comparison to the foot locker managed by even the early recruit in the armed forces. The content is organised, neatly presented, and always spotlessly clean.
To extend this concept, I remember once working with the state full-bore rifle team, comprised of roughly 50% amateur shooters and 50% of people with some military background. It was interesting that many of the amateurs had never even heard of the use of routines (though of course they had them) and revelled in being able to make changes and additions. The military guys really struggled with the thought of making any changes in their drilled in "form", which by the way had very little competition thinking relevant content.
Most of our man's training is system imposed, based on high reps and attempts to catch up on conditioning and technique evidenced by the better performers. "If you want to be competitive, find out what your opposition is doing and then do at least that!"
Often working with under-prepared and resourced local coaches, the campaign planning and competition preparation is poor to non-existent. Mental health here is easily, and with the help of our modern athlete confessors, confused as equalling a lack of ability to cope. Beyond Blue and Black Dog become attractive options.
These guys probably don't even have a packing routine, let alone a way to "travel their game systems" from home to a new training / competition site.
Let's extend the footlocker to a container sitting out in the backyard, because it needs some separation, but close links to "real life". The container is where the various bins, the components of their professional life, the various aspects of their training are beginning to be drawn together in some structured, systematic, categorised way.
Lets add some "lining up of the ducks" in the personal life, some assisted "ah ha" moments that help them to be more organised, more disciplined in sorting the mess out on the floor.
I used to get a phone call from Andrew Hoy around midnight from his training base outside London. I'm glad one of his sponsors was an English Telco. We would typically talk about how he had a number of piles of paper neatly stacked up on his desk, each one a plan for a different horse for a different future event, or related activity. We would talk about how someone would come in, leave the door open, and knock the corner of the desk leaving the piles strewn all over the room. It would take some time, but we would get it all back together. This periodic spring clean up helped line up his ducks. He got better and better at it. It took the pressure off.
Mental Health became equated with the ability to remain structured, disciplined and systematic under pressure. It made more sense when it was subtended by a range of training programs selected to make being structured, disciplined and systematic easier.
By isolating these components as skills, drills and checklists it became easier to travel and unpack not only his stable, but his full set of riding systems - just like back home in Windsor.
Note the use of some recurring terminologies. Linking mental health with specific training programs underpinned by cause & effect principles is part of the paradigm shift of the CF2 Framework.
Systematic refers to routines. It refers to thinking. It refers to decision making. It refers to filing and maintaining the storage shed. It refers to organising your life around your sport as opposed to trying to fit your sport into your life. And so we go.
The Go Bag is the way you travel the key components of your performance to the next venue and event. It contains mandelas, visualisations, routines, computer games, mantras, spare sox and jox, attitudes, "plan B"s, scripts, goals, venue plans, etc
Mission Ready performers have their act together, organised in their personalised go bag.
CF2 training programs provide them with a structured, maintained storage container. Its sits next to their disciplined life. They have become professional athletes. People who are not victims of their challenges and competition realities, but genuine competitors who have plans for all the things that will be thrown in front of them. Plan that are based on a solid set of personal and professional skills. Skills that are underpinned by evidence based training programs.
Our app is the Go Bag. Our website is the storage shed. Its content is the "go to" source of information, understanding and training programs.
The training programs are sourced from our experience and knowledge or from our system partners - groups that have done the hard yards in developing evidence based programs. Our solution components are more than reference tools. We will point people to relevant sites and sources, but the recommendations and programs will be ours.
The best of them will find a home in the Go Bag alongside the more traditional items. We will steer users to those items using a chat-bot, an electronic concierge who will be good at helping the user find his way.
If you are writing background material for the module, checking sources, comments and recommendations, you are probably producing unrestricted source material for the storage shed, may be close to identifying some neat portable versions of the ideas that can go in the Go Bag, and may be identifying some worthwhile system partners that we can utilise or make some changes and use.
For example, the Psychology Skills group may have some materials in there that can inform a better education program for the website. The mindfulness group from Europe may provide us with the vehicle that allows us to come with a recommended training program driven with our guidance from the website.
Some of the digital systems such as the HRV4 Biofeedback app my provide our concierge with the means to direct traffic (and self-awareness) better.
To me, the next stage is starting to sort out the piles of paper. We can put components into training programs driven from the website, educational pieces that live on the website, drills that can go straight in the go bag. Write with the freedom of not worrying where it might finish. Understand that websites can grow to any dimensions, with any number of pages required to present material. Write with the thought that at some point you might be competing for a prized spot in the Go Bag (app). The app will need to be the vehicle that creates an acceptance of providing value to our target market, but as Graham identified recently, the solution is a vertical one, utilising several "channels" and dimensions.
JC