Updated : 24/05/2007 11:39:52

About Us

Winning Enterprises Project

The Foundation embarked on a pioneering pilot with Israeli based Winning Enterprises, to train the coaches and elite competitors in Scotland’s rugby 7s, swimming and athletics teams “how to think correctly under pressure like a winner”, with a focus on the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in March 2006.

This “Winning Scots” pilot is led by Yehuda Shinar, who was credited by Sir Clive Woodward as being instrumental in his contribution towards England winning the Rugby World Cup in 2003.   

From October 2005 until March 2006, Shinar staged “Winning Scots” master classes which focus on teaching winning behaviours and identifying the “warrior instinct” required to build a pool of Winning Scots.  

While no-one is capable of winning all the time, Shinar firmly believes winners differ from others in the way they think, particularly under pressure, and that “winning behaviour’’ is a skill which anyone can learn, practice, acquire – and improve.

By using an appropriate mindset, winners can achieve - regardless of high pressure and competitive circumstances.   This method is called T –CUP or ‘Thinking Correctly Under Pressure’ which encourages optimum levels of functioning or ‘winning behaviour’.   

Yehuda Shinar’s Winning Approach adopts three different criteria to testing athletes and analysing their chances of success:

• Warrior Skills– the strength and level of ‘fighting spirit’ occurring naturally in the athlete
• Thinking Skills – the level and strength of the winning quality – the ability to think correctly under pressure
• Technical Skills– the talent/skill level above an agreed-upon minimum in the sport

Interestingly, the Israeli approach is very different from traditional talent identification and development approaches prevalent in Scotland, as technical ‘talent’ is third in order of importance.  Under the Winning Approach, if coaches detect sportspeople with ‘warrior’ behaviour they can train and develop them to ‘think like a winner’ and succeed.

We were greatly encouraged by his success in our first Winning Scots project in the countdown to last year’s Commonwealth Games, when Yehuda worked with national swimming coach Chris Martin, who contributed six of the 11 golds in Melbourne 2006.
The longer term objective of The Foundation in embarking on this pilot project is to demonstrate sufficient evidence of impact in the Scottish context that further programmes targeting a much broader constituency of potential ‘winners’ in sport (and more broadly) can be developed and introduced.