A Journey of Human Connection, Performance, and Learning
- Jun 12
- 6 min read
Written by Arj Perera, High Performance Coach
Arj Perera is a staunch advocate for the progression of women's sport, having spent over 15 years as a High Performance Coach through Basketball and Volleyball at the elite levels. He is the founder of Human Mechanics Australia and The Brown Bear Coaches, providing high-performance coaching for elite and developing female athletes.
I’ve spent fifteen years working with athletes across grassroots development, semi-professional, and elite sport. If there’s one thing that surprises people when I say it out loud, it’s this, I learned more from champions than any book, lecture, or course ever taught me. That’s not false modesty; it’s the honest truth of what this work actually is when you’re in it as a career.
When I use the word “champion,” I mean two things. The first is the literal kind, athletes who have won championships, made national teams, and stood on the highest steps. But the second kind is just as important, and in many ways more instructive: the athlete who may never have lifted a trophy but who shows up every single day with the mindset, work ethic, and standards of someone building toward something exceptional. Both kinds of champions have shaped how I coach. Both have taught me things I couldn’t have learned any other way.
What championship athletes taught me about myself
When I first started working with the Bendigo Spirit in the WNBL, I walked in with everything I knew and wanted to utilise it all, complex programs, layered systems, every method I’d studied and accumulated. Looking back now, I describe it the same way every time: I was like a kid who’d just unwrapped every toy at once and wanted to play with them all. The sessions were full of complexity that didn’t serve the athletes; rather, it served my own need to prove I belonged in that environment. What those athletes showed me, through their responses, feedback, and results, was that simplicity works. The big compound movements, the basics done consistently and correctly, produced predictable and often exceptional results. It was the champions in that program who quietly dismantled my overcomplicated approach and replaced it with something that worked holistically while also building the foundation for the coach I was going to become. That was the first lesson, but it wasn’t the most important one.
What champions taught me about people
The more time I spent inside elite environments, the more I came to understand something about high-performing athletes that you can’t read in a textbook. Champions expect more of themselves than anyone else ever will, and when something disrupts that, an injury, a loss of form, the physical reality of an ageing body that can no longer perform the way it once did, the gap between who they were and who they are becomes its own kind of battle. I’ve worked with athletes who have stood on the biggest stages, won the biggest games, and then faced the hard truth that their bodies had changed in ways that couldn’t be fully reversed. No amount of expert physiotherapy, surgical interventions, or structured strength work could return them to exactly what they were.
But here’s what I’ve also seen from athletes who carry a champion mindset without the medals to show for it yet: they handle that same adversity differently. Not because it hurts less, but because they’ve already built a relationship with the process of working through hard things. They’ve practised it, and that’s taught me that resilience isn’t just a trait; it’s a skill, built through the daily choices that define a champion’s work ethic long before any trophy is on the line.
What both kinds of champions taught me is that the program is never enough on its own. The relationship is what carries people through the hardest parts, and you can only build that relationship if you’re genuinely present with the person, not just the athlete. I learned to stop leading every conversation with performance data and to start paying attention to how someone walked into the room and what their energy said before they spoke. Champions taught me to read people, not just results.
That shift changed how I communicate. I decided early on that I would never give advice; instead, when I’m invited to, I give opinions. The distinction matters. Advice tells someone what to do; an opinion gives them something to consider and leaves the decision where it belongs, with them. But here’s what elite athletes taught me about that approach: they will only hear your opinion if they trust you, and trust at that level is earned slowly and lost quickly. Championship athletes have been around enough people who wanted something from them to know the difference between genuine care and an agenda. You cannot fake it; these are highly tuned individuals, and they will find you out. So, the lesson they gave me was simple and demanding at the same time: be real or don’t bother.
Learn the lesson about rest
Training champions also taught me, very early in my career, something I didn’t expect about rest, which seems obvious now but was a huge lesson when you’re a young coach and still learning: it’s about the rejuvenation of the mind, not just the body. Whether they’ve won championships or are simply living like someone who will, these are people wired to work, to push, to compete. Telling a champion to take a day off feels counterintuitive to everything they’ve built their identity around. But I’ve sat with enough elite athletes to know that the pressure surrounding them, social media, selection, public expectation, can quietly erode a person from the inside. Some of the most valuable conversations I’ve had with high-performing athletes had nothing to do with training. They were conversations about having a coffee with a mate, watching a movie, sitting on the PlayStation for an hour, basically just being a normal human being for a day.
The athletes with champion mindsets often needed that reminder most. Their drive, the very thing that sets them apart, can also become the thing that works against them when it’s not balanced with rest and perspective. Those athletes taught me that sustainable performance is built on a whole person, not just a trained body, and that lesson now sits at the centre of how I build every program I write.
The gap that still needs to be closed
Working across both elite and grassroots levels has also made one pattern impossible to ignore. Female athletes, particularly at the development level, are still not receiving the same investment, resources, or structured physical preparation as their male counterparts. I’ve seen exceptionally talented young women, athletes with every hallmark of a champion in the making, in their actions, attitude, and work ethic, disengage from sport not because they lacked ability, but because the system around them didn’t match their potential.
The female athletes I’ve worked with have taught me that developing a champion isn’t just about physical preparation. It’s about teaching a young person to advocate for themselves, to give and receive feedback without fear, and to understand that they are entitled to the same opportunities as anyone else. That lesson has made me a better coach and a more informed voice in environments where those conversations need to be had.
What parents need to know
To the parents reading this, I want to be direct. When you place your child in the care of a coach, you are offering us something irreplaceable to look after. Every young athlete who walks into my facility carries the weight of their family’s trust, and that is not something I take lightly, not for a single session.
What the champions I’ve worked with have taught me, both those who have won it all and those who simply live and train like someone who intends to, is that the people who show up and do the work deserve to be treated with respect, honesty, and genuine investment. Your child deserves a coach who understands that. Find coaches who have been taught that lesson. Usually, it’s the athletes who taught it to them.
Twenty years in, I’m still learning, and I expect, and hope, that I always will. Because that’s what training champions actually does, whether they’re holding trophies or just training like one day they will. If you’re paying attention, it makes you better, too.
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Read more from Arj Perera
Arj Perera, High Performance Coach
Empowering our youth female athletes to focus on their physical development to build strong, athletic, and resilient bodies has become Arj's primary focus over the last 15 years. With Conference and National Championships under his belt as well, he brings this knowledge and expertise to our most important athletes outside of National and Pro circuits - our youth.
