What You'll Gain from This Workshop

Explore the core values and experiences that make sport meaningful and impactful for youth, beyond just winning and performance.

Learn about the long-term effects of focusing solely on short-term success — including youth dropout — and why a shift in approach is essential.

Discover tools and methods you can apply right away to create belonging, purpose, and enjoyment in your coaching or leadership.

Leave with renewed motivation and clarity on how sport can be a vehicle for personal growth, resilience, and positive social change.

Meet Your Facilitator

Laurence Halsted

TAP Director Of Mentoring and Leadership Programmes

Laurence Halsted is a two-time British Olympic fencer and multiple European medallist, who competed in the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Games. After more than a decade of performing at the highest levels of sport, Laurence hung up his swords and took on a role as the Performance Director of a national federation alongside becoming the Director of mentoring at The True Athlete Project. In 2021 Laurence published TAP's book, Becoming a True Athlete - a practical philosophy for flourishing through sport, which goes far beyond the results and medals to rediscover the true value of being an athlete. Laurence is on a mission to help people to discover that a mindful, compassionate approach to life is both far healthier and more sustainable and will also help us to perform better than what our traditional concepts would have us believe about succeeding in life.

Workshop Overview

The current result-obsessed culture of sport encourages a focus on short-term gains and superficial success, and completely overlooks the most meaningful aspects of sport for the people taking part. This has all kinds of undesirable effects, with the depressingly high percentage of kids that drop out from sport, never to return, being a particularly damaging one. At TAP we believe that sport can be a vital part of the solution to society's biggest challenges, but to fulfil that ambition it must first be relevant and attractive to younger generations. This workshop will explore the most meaningful aspects of sport for young athletes - taking a long-term, holistic view - and will offer practical advice for how to bring more of this approach into your sporting environment.