WRITTEN TESTIMONIALS
I was never great at asking for testimonials in my early years, still not the best at it to be honest. But I do believe it's important to share real feedback from real people, especially in a World where so many websites can make generalised statements regarding their experience & clients. The first written testimonials are from over 20 years ago now. More recently I have started to record some feedback which I always ask to be as honest & raw as people are comfortable sharing.
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“Mark Bennett is professional, reliable and talented. He has the ability to inspire, motivate and connect with anyone he works with; taking their ability to a higher level to get the best results”.
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Dame Kelly Holmes MBE, Double Olympic Champion
“This Thorough and extremely valuable system has helped me to develop and understand how my clients like to learn and improve results. I strongly recommend PDS to anyone who wants to develop as a coach and maximise the performance of the teams and athletes they work with.”
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Rob Watts PGA Golf Coach, & coach to Open champion Darren Clark
“I learnt more about my team-mates and myself in 5 days than in 7 years of professional rugby. I now have the tools to make myself a better player and team-mate and to be the success I aspire to. I would recommend the course to anyone who wants to achieve their goals and potential.”
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Kyran Bracken – England Rugby Union World Champion
"Mark delivered an energetic, challenging and thought provoking session for coaching leads from across governing bodies of sport. We received extremely positive feedback about the Performance Development Systems (PDS), and Mark’s stories of his own learning along his coaching journey; “Mark Bennett’s talk was very inspiring, providing a way of thinking that my Governing Body may need to adopt at certain levels of the performance pathway”; Mark Bennett is a high quality speaker and really emphasises the key characteristics of High Performance coaching”. There’s no doubt that PDS can help organisations to develop their coaching programmes."
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Dr Oliver Holt
"Mark is an outstanding coach mentor and innovator in sports personnel management. He is a leader in his field and has changed professional best practice in talent and elite coaching especially in the UK. He brings a different perspective which challenges traditional coach leadership practice and clearly focuses on athlete empowerment and positive coach behaviours including greater self-awareness and analysis. He had significant impact with National Youth team coaches when I was the National Teams Director with GB Basketball".
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​Warwick Cain – Director High Performance Basketball - GB Basketball National Team Director/Head of Performance
“As an England rugby union coach I have attended plenty of career development and coaching courses. These courses have provided me with many good ideas, concepts and theories, but non have impacted on me the way the PDS Performance coach course has.
The training consisted of one day per week learning practical techniques, followed a few days later by one-on-one mentoring with direct feedback and reviewing. All theories and techniques were explained in a way that I understood and could immediately integrate into my own coaching. This style of learning was fantastic and has moved my coaching forward in leaps and bounds.
Within four weeks my own coaching has been transformed! This is not just short-term change either; I believe this course has changed the way I will coach for the rest of my career. I have no doubt the techniques I have learnt have had a positive influence on the performance of the England team.
Any coach who is serious about maximising the performance potential of the athletes and teams they are working with needs to experience PDS Performance coach course for themselves.”
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Mike Ford, England Rugby Union & British Lions Coach
“I have been coaching for over two decades and travelling the globe with Changing the Game Project for the last five years. In that time I have met many incredible coaches, but none of them have influenced and improved my coaching the way Mark Bennett has. My work with Mark has changed the way I coach, transformed my teams, and has made a huge difference in the development of my players. If you have the chance to work with Mark, do it. It will make you a better coach, a better leader, and a transformative figure in the lives of your athletes.”
John O’Sullivan - Founder and CEO Changing The Game Project
“I have been coaching for over two decades and travelling the globe with Changing the Game Project for the last five years. In that time I have met many incredible coaches, but none of them have influenced and improved my coaching the way Mark Bennett has. My work with Mark has changed the way I coach, transformed my teams, and has made a huge difference in the development of my players. If you have the chance to work with Mark, do it. It will make you a better coach, a better leader, and a transformative figure in the lives of your athletes.”
John O’Sullivan - Founder and CEO Changing The Game Project
"Meeting with Mark after travelling the same path for so many years was both an enlightening and empowering experience. Enlightening, through being on the same journey, climbing similar obstacles of confrontation, being buffered through the institutional lack of acceptance to change. Empowering, through meeting challenged minded coaches, looking for a transformational model and process to support player growth; this behavioral player centered approach focusing on:
Self-feedback or review of personal opportunities, threats, choices and commitments.
Acceptance of agreed boundaries for team mates to offer reinforcement or accountability to an understood set of UAEs, specifically to task.
Mark expressed the thought ‘a problem cannot be solved at the level of which it was created’ To solve this his rule of 3 sets an accountability environment of internal review first, leading to a progressive external process to guide the solution, returning ck through player discovery.
The PDS way is a very logical system, to solve illogical problems. It’s not easy to implement, as a coach, I have to change also. Adapting my approach and relentlessly applying the system, first to myself and second to my players. I discovered, If I’m striving for excellence through my personal set criteria of acceptable and unacceptable in a given situation, only then I can model to my players the similar outcomes through theirs. My light bulb moment, change is not just for players! To be transformational we, coaches, have to change first!!"
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Neil Hull - Lecturer in Coaching Education University of Texas San Antonio
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“I have worked quite closely with Mark Bennett. He’s been a tremendous help to me in in understanding myself & my athletes. His principles & personal feedback enhanced what I already do without compromising my coaching authenticity.”
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Kevin Gill – Head Shot Gun Coach, British Olympic Shooting. Coach to Olympic & World Champion Winners
Great Britain Wheelchair Rugby Tokyo 2020
Paralympic Gold Medal Winners
This was a Great Britain 'team' first ever wheelchair rugby Paralympic medal, a first for a European nation,
& the first gold for Great Britain in a team sport in the Games’ sixty-one-year history!
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"Thanks for all your input making us better coaches. We definitely view the game differently, and giving our players the power to decision make has made their performances Gold medal standard"
Rob Tarr - GBWR coach