Fergus Wallace

Sports mental skills performance coach. Innovation/Neuroscience in sports training. #BeliefCoding aspergers He/Him

[Fergus Wallace @SPACEtoPERFORM]

@Nishan_011 Need

[Adam @Adam00xx]

Professional athletes remembering they were once just kids in the stands will never get old 🥹

[Daniel Hussey @DanielHussey2]

These two still have it @ITVRugby 🎥

[Steve Magness @stevemagness]

Norway is once again dominating the winter Olympics.

And this is their youth sports program:

Participation trophies for all kids.
No keeping score until 13.
No national travel competitions in youth sports.
No posting youth results online.
Motto: “Joy of Sport for All.”

They let kids be kids. And it works.

But…it’s the winter Olympics,right? Recently, they have had tremendous success in summer sports.

Karsten Warholm demolished the 400 meter hurdles world record. Kristian Blummenfelt broke the Ironman triathlon record and won Olympic gold. His training partner, Gustav Ivan, won the 2022 Ironman World Championship. Casper Ruud reached world number two in tennis. Viktor Hovland is a top ten golfer in the world. Erling Haaland set the record for the most goals in a season in the Premier League. Beach volleyball champs, a surge of elite runners. By any metric, Norway’s elite athletes are achieving on a global stage. Yet, if we turn to their youth sports, their programs are the opposite of the US.

Norway doesn’t allow for official scorekeeping until the age of thirteen. They dissuade early national travel teams in favor of local leagues. You can’t even post the results of youth games online without being fined. And almost sacrilegious in certain American circles, Norway doesn’t allow trophies unless everyone gets one.

As Tore Ovrebo, Norway’s director of elite sport, told USA Today writer Dan Wolken, “We think the biggest motivation for the kids to do sports is that they do it with their friends and they have fun while they’re doing it and we want to keep that feeling throughout their whole career.” Their youth sporting model can be summed up with their chosen slogan, “Joy of Sport for All.”

But not keeping score, giving out trophies, not being “win at all costs”...that’s anti-American! How can they be competitive?

Research backs their approach up.

1. The fire has to come from within

If you look at ​research​ on prodigies who eventually become standout adult performers, a deep intrinsic drive is paramount. Researchers found that intrinsically motivated football players were 3.5x more likely to make it to the next level, and athletes in general 2x more likely.

The problem is that early success often pulls young people away from this inner drive. Kids start playing soccer (or violin or chess—this isn’t just about sports) because it is exciting and fun. As they improve, they gain accolades and praise from their parents, coaches, and teachers. They start winning trophies or seeing their names in online commentary. Without even realizing it, their intrinsic drive gets replaced by external validation and a need to please and impress others.

The quickest way to kill that internal motivation? Hype achievements and be a crazy controlling parent or coach.

The best way to create and maintain intrinsic motivation is to let kids dabble, explore, and find something with which their interests and talents align. Then, let them enjoy it without an undue emphasis on success. Praise effort, character, and teamwork, not results. This is easy to talk about but hard to do. Find ways to reward and incentivize the values you want to instill. That means not taking the easy road and talking about who set a new mile best or scored the most points, but instead highlighting who hustled during the fourth quarter, rallied after it seemed like the match was over, or displayed exemplary sportsmanship.

2. Go Broad over Specialization

Even if the entire point of youth sports was to create future champions (which it’s not), we’d still adopt something similar to the Norwegian model. An ​analysis​ of over 6,000 athletes explored what separates athletes who reached world class and those who came up short.

Those who reached world-class had during their youth:
-More multi-sport than specialized practice
-Started their primary sport later
-Accumulated less overall formal practice
-Initially progressed slower than national class peers

Those who performed well when young, but didn’t progress:
-Started their primary sport earlier
-Specialized, engaging in more practice in one sport
-Made quicker initial progress

Norway doesn’t have 300 plus million people and an NCAA system to funnel talent. They have to develop theirs. And they realize the best way to do that is keep as many people in the system as possible.

Why? Because you can’t predict talent development very well! Just go look at the age group record books. It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking early performance equals talent and potential. The kid running a 6-minute mile at 10 looks way better than the one running 6:45. But if the faster one is at track practice 5 days a week and the slower one rolls out of gym class in jeans and runs it off “fitness” from just playing, well I’m betting on the slower one!

When we assess performance early on, we’re not measuring talent, we’re looking at training age and opportunity. And we’re crowning winners based on who started grinding first.

America gets away with the insane achievement model because we can burn out 9 kids to get 1 survivor. Norway can’t afford to do that. They take the longer, more sustainable model.

Rethinking Youth Sports:

The whole point of youth sports should be for kids to learn, develop, have fun, and want to come back and play again next season! The best chance of developing a D1 scholarship athlete is essentially to do the exact opposite of what our current youth sports fiasco promotes. Even the poster child for early specialization, Tiger Woods, ​acknowledged​ it’s not a good thing for parents to push their kids too hard: “Don’t force your kids into sports,” he says. “I never was. To this day, my dad has never asked me to go play golf. I ask him. It’s the child’s desire to play that matters, not the parent’s desire to have the child play. Keep it fun.”

While youth sports in America aren’t going to adopt the Norwegian model anytime soon, we can rebalance the equation. As I outlined in my book, it’s not getting rid of competitiveness, it’s rebalancing the equation to make sure that crazy mom, dad, or coach don’t extinguish the fire that makes great competitors (and sport fun!).

In research on performance orientation and grades in school, a teaching environment that supported and emphasized mastery[PA1] , where students focused on the process of learning and comprehension instead of a comparison to others, was also linked to better grades. But it wasn’t the direct relationship that an outcome orientation had. Instead, in one study on college students, a mastery approach was linked to challenge-seeking, which in turn predicted end-of-the-year grades. In another study, mastery goals predicted higher levels of interest and enjoyment. Mastery works on our approach system without activating avoidance. It frees us up to take on a challenge and pursue our interests without getting bogged down by the pressure or judgment that often comes with an obsession with outcomes. The same findings hold true when looking at sport or the workplace. In a large meta-analysis that analyzed the impact of goal setting in sports, process-orientated goals had a large effect on performance. Outcome goals had little to no effect.

These two paths represent a fast versus slow road to success. Both a mastery or outcome focus can lead to better performance, but the latter is akin to taking a shortcut. Obsession over outcomes is the most direct path to improvement, but it comes with some downsides that shift us toward avoidance. The slow path takes a longer, indirect route. It helps improve our performance not by focusing on the results themselves but by supporting the foundation that ultimately leads to better performance. It stokes the fire of enjoyment and interest to sustain our curiosity and work ethic over the long haul. It pushes us toward challenge-seeking so that when we inevitably hit a roadblock, we’ll take it on instead of trying to protect our ego. Both approaches work. One is more sustainable, providing success with less angst. Society has thrown us so far out of balance that we can’t even see the slow route right in front of us.

We can either instill a love of sport in our youth, or we can turn sport into a burden where kids are exhausted, stressed, and scared. We’ve seen this go both ways, and the results couldn’t be more different. One leads to happy, healthy, and better young athletes. The other leads to burnout, family tension, mental health challenges, and quitting. As parents, volunteers, coaches, and community members, let’s all do what we can to minimize the latter and champion the former.

-Steve

[Manly Mentor @manly_mentor]

Men,
You need to hear this ‼️

[ᴍᴀɴᴄʜᴇꜱᴛᴇʀ ᴍᴜꜱɪᴄ ꜰᴏʀᴇᴠᴇʀ™️ @MANCHESTERMUS10]

The life and soul of any room he was in.
[Ian Brown]

So much love x

[The Sigma Mindset @thesigmamindset]

You'll never look at your phone again after watching this ‼️‼️

[Fergus Wallace @SPACEtoPERFORM]

@zebriez He's/she's/they're SOUND! Irishy

[DP World Tour @DPWorldTour]

2025, the year that had it all.

[DP World Tour @DPWorldTour]

Haotong Li is congratulated by his coach, @jamiegoughgolf, after securing himself dual membership on the PGA TOUR for 2026 🙌

#DPWTC | #RolexSeries

[Iona Stephen @Iona_Stephen]

Spend enough time inside the ropes of any professional tour and you begin to feel its rhythm. Every circuit has its own cadence , the PGA Tour with its scale and impact, the LET with its quiet resilience, LIV tour the newest with its noise and ambition.

But the @DPWorldTour , the tour I’ve been lucky to work on since 2019, has something entirely its own. Something rare. Something you don’t just see, you sense.

Perhaps, it’s family.

Not the glossy kind. Early-morning coffees, hugs at airport gates, shared jokes at courtesy-car pick-ups, and the knowing glances when the wind whips sideways in Scotland.
It’s built on a thousand small human moments. The staff, ops teams, rules officials, volunteers, media crews rebuild a world each week and pack it away again, a travelling village held together by a bond.

That nomadic life forges a tribe. And its roots stretch back at least to Seve, but probably beyond. The original heartbeat of this family tree.

Those of us who work on the tour, broadcasters, staff, caddies, media, photographers, physios, we feel it as well.

We see the hugs, the handshakes, the tears, the laughter, the mischief. We know we’re witnessing something rare in sport: a tour where friendship sits at the heart of high performance. And we’ve seen it play out at Ryder Cups.

I hope that this spirit is protected in the years to come and right now there are some incredible custodians carrying it forward.

Congratulations @mattfitz94 and @rorymcilroy on a thrilling end to 2025! I’ve loved playing a small role in some incredible moments this year and never take it for granted.

📸 @dpwtc

[Julian Goldie SEO @JulianGoldieSEO]

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Want the full workflow? 👇

🔁 Like + RT
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[Fergus Wallace @SPACEtoPERFORM]

@JulianGoldieSEO Yes

[DP World Tour @DPWorldTour]

Rory McIlroy has just driven the green at the 394 yard par four 10th 🤯

#ADGolfChamps | #RolexSeries

[Fergus Wallace @SPACEtoPERFORM]

First demo of our new platform in the UAE

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

An idea that I can't stop thinking about:

The Capability Gap

Alabama coach Nick Saban refers to the Capability Gap in this clip from a discussion with Holly Rowe:

“We oftentimes talk about what someone’s potential is, but I think to put it in better terms...the Capability Gap is what you’re capable of relative to what you’re doing...if you understand the truth about that, you can actually take information that can help you close that gap.”

The Capability Gap is a simple idea with powerful implications for every area of your life.

It requires understanding two things:

1. Your full capability
2. Your current delivery

In my experience, most people underestimate their full capability and overestimate their current delivery.

In other words, they think their Capability Gap is small, when in reality, it’s much larger than they realize.

That’s why having mentors, coaches, friends, and family who help you see the truth about your full capability and keep you honest about your current delivery is everything.

This isn’t about sports. This is about life:

Do you have people who help you think bigger about what you’re capable of?

Do you have people who tell you when your current delivery isn’t good enough?

We all need those people.

The ones who push us to get uncomfortable, to stretch our thinking, and to raise our standards.

We need people who help us become better partners, parents, friends, colleagues, and leaders.

Find the people who tell you two truths:

1. What you’re truly capable of
2. What you’re currently delivering on

Identify your Capability Gap and then work relentlessly to close it!

If this resonated or taught you something, share it with others and follow @SahilBloom for more.

[Ryder Cup Europe @RyderCupEurope]

We’re not crying, you are 🥹💙

#TeamEurope | #OurTimeOurPlace

[Ryder Cup Europe @RyderCupEurope]

Luke Donald gives us a tour of the European team room 🇪🇺

#TeamEurope | #RyderCup

[HLTCO @HLTCO]

Fantastic from Brighton, this. A massively important message delivered very well.