Safety pins at the Olympics

The Olympics are the epitome of peak athletic performance, an incredible logistical feat (especially amid a global pandemic) and often the catalyst for setting new standards for human performance in different domains.

If you look closely at the track and field events, you will notice that they also use safety pins on their uniforms. It got me thinking about how and why that could happen.

Performance at the Olympics is an obsession for?many people - athletes, coaches, researchers, equipment manufacturers.

For example, there has been a debate at these Olympics about why there are so many fast times on the track. People have suggested that it may be one or some of a number of technological advances. The track is apparently the fastest that has ever been built - specifically researched, designed and engineered for that purpose. There has been a lot of debate about the shoes. This started in the distance running like the marathons and is now turning up on the track. They are using carbon fibre plates, foam that has been adapted from space agency materials and it's leading to many people (including Usain Bolt) suggesting that it is unfair and unreasonable (another debate for another time). There is ongoing research into the aerodynamic nature of the uniforms is researched to give an advantage.

It's no surprise - in track running, it can come down to 0.01 of a second (like it did in the Men's 4 x 100m relay).

Still, they attach their bibs to their uniform using safety pins.

I find it so funny. I love seeing the world's fastest athletes who have spent their life getting to this moment agonising over every detail with household items attached to them in front of a worldwide audience.

Apart from finding it amusing, I think that there are two ways to apply lessons from this to our teams. They are looking at this from two sides of the coin.

Firstly, if the world's fastest people have safety pins on their uniform, it suggests that while sometimes the little things matter, it's also possible to achieve world class performance without needing to be across every detail. Fix the most important things and execute on those - don't sweat the small stuff.

Secondly, and from the other side of the coin, it could help your team to look at obvious and simple solutions that give continuous improvement. If you asked the Great Britain team who were beaten by 0.01 seconds to gold by Italy if they would like to gain 0.0025 seconds (get your head around how small that number is!) per leg to get the gold and they would probably be prepared to try sewing their bibs on.

How hard can it be to get the bibs sewn on? That's what parents for most Little Athletics kids manage to do each season. It's either something that hasn't been considered or something that has been considered and has been decided is not going to make enough a difference to the performance.

As with so much of team performance, there is no right answer about whether minor tweaks are the key to improving your performance. There are, however, useful questions.

Here are a couple of questions for you to get you started this week:

1. Are we sweating the small stuff too much?
2. Could we focus on some simple changes to get significant gains?

Go well,

Keegan