Ash Smith

Ash Smith is a performance coach with over 20 years experience of helping people make permanent behaviour changes. He develops their skills and more importantly their ability to perform on the biggest stage, having coached athletes to achieve 8 Junior World Championships, 3 World Team Championship medals, Paralympic medals and numerous appearances at Wimbledon. As a keen junior tennis player, he harboured ambitions of a playing career on the professional tour, but having been asked to assist his own coach in delivering some lessons, he quickly realised that he took more satisfaction from helping others achieve than he did from competing himself. Thus, a career in coaching was born. Ash has worked at all levels of sport, from building programmes from scratch to working with elite athletes, helping people achieve more than they thought possible. In 2012, Ash was selected to join the Elite Coach Apprenticeship programme with UK Sport, a select group of coaches from across the Olympic and Paralympic disciplines, brought together to provide the highest level of coach education from world class practitioners and was also part of a working group of coaches helping to shape the talent pathways for Olympic and Paralympic sports in the UK. Outside of sports, Ash has worked with businesses of all sizes, schools & colleges, military personnel and individuals to share his thoughts on "What It Takes To Win" – mindset lessons he has learned from working with the very best in elite sport – helping people develop the mental skills they need to thrive and not just survive in business and life. Ash has worked with some of the world's best practitioners in psychology, cognitive behaviour, change management and leadership, working towards his philosophy of building "adaptable experts": people who can think on their feet and react to their environment. Ash has honed a facilitative coaching style, which is both relaxed and highly effective, and is an experienced speaker in education, conference and corporate settings. So, if you want to develop adaptable experts in your organisation and accelerate your teams towards high performance, a seminar or keynote from Ash is a winning decision.