People who have had some contact with the NBI Brain Profiling system will know that the NBI assessment tools evaluate the thinking preferences of adults and children to give an objective report of strengths and areas of growth.
What you may not realise is that there is a whole battery of assessments to evaluate thinking preferences of individuals when they’re participating in their specific sport! Think rugby, netbal, cricket, hockey, golf, soccer, tennis!
I recently had the opportunity to assist with the NBI Student and NBI Cricket profiles of young cricketers at a school. It was a wonderful experience and it made me think how important it is to talk about why we profile in sport.
In short, the goal for doing a sport profile is focused development - both of the individual player, as well as of the team.
Let’s take an example from the cricket setting -
It is vitally important to know which players are best able to focus in a near impossibly-stressful situations (think very first over or very last over), who is the player that can bat the whole day long without losing attention, who is comfortable with taking those risky shots, and who has a knack for motivation and lifing team morale when the team spirit is in the doldrums.
A team simply cannot come to its full potential if each dynamic member is not bringing his or her natural traits to the table - consistently and at the right time.
Other key elements:
- Knowing areas of strengths and areas of growth means that those areas needing development can be appropriately addressed.
- If team members will know each other’s strengths they can support each other better, have greater understanding for the coach’s decisions and will be more open to learn from each other. -- Lastly but very importantly - coaching can thus be tailored.
This is very exciting science and should be seriously considered by sports teams wanting to go further.
