Past Success = Coaching Greatness?

The week 5 lecture and tutorial material focused on the concepts of observation and augmented information. During the course of Keith's presentations he addressed the idea of  whether having played at the highest level in a given sport gives you some sort of predisposition to coaching at an elite level in that sport. 

Some of my fellow class mates including Sarah Taylor and Trent Hopkinson have addressed this in their blogs which are well worth reading as they give some interesting insights and personal experiences.

What got me thinking was that Keith noted that Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and the number one women's canoe slalom paddler (I'm unsure of her name) are all self coached. Having read his recommended link, Spectrum of Teaching Styles and browsed over their spectrum of 7 coaching concepts, it becomes hard to imagine how these may be implemented considering that the role of "teachers and learners" becomes blurred when an athlete takes coaching upon themselves.

Perhaps another limitation lies in what Keith referred to as memory decay, where what you are thinking the movement (golf swing, tennis serve etc) may differ from what you recall when looking back on performances. This, to me, is one of the greatest advantages of having your own coach who's job it is to provide information for you, rather than relying on yourself to produce firstly a quality action and the secondly critique your own movement. Which could essentially create an environment where the athlete becomes their own worst enemy. After all, athletes and coaches often say that the best performances come from when there is little thought and they 'just do it' rather than over thinking it.

On the other hand, its hard to argue with the results of Woods and Federer, they are some of the greatest athletes ever, and after all the Spectrum of Teaching concept #4 also states that "no one teaching style is universally good or bad". And I think that is the single most important thing, the relationship between coach and athlete is better when its unique and is working best for them. I think it's something that is discovered rather than taught and perhaps the reason that players make good coaches is that they can relate to their athlete. I think a prime example of this is Andy Murray employing Ivan Lendl, who found himself in a similar position to Murray having not won any of the four major tournaments at a similar point in his career, despite having the ability to do so.


Anyway, those are my thoughts for this week, feel free to comment!

Cheers,
Leigh

At the Coal Face

After a solid session of study procrastination, I stumbled across this article. I know this is something that I focused on in my last post, but this got me thinking again about how dynamic coaches need to be in their methods.

Particularly now more than ever technology is changing the way sports are played and thus coached. With these new sources of information available to coaches, they are effectively at the coal face in that they are the ones first exposed and responsible for how this new source of data is utilised to the benefit of their team.

It will be interesting to see how this application of GPS (already used for tracking players) in the AFL will be used, if at all.

Cheers,
Leigh.

Are Players the Only Performers in Sport?

The lecture and tutorial in week 4 centered around the idea of coaches being viewed as performers in a similar sense that a player's career is defined by their performances in their respective sports. We agreed that essentially a coaches role is to maximize the performance of their players. The divisive point in this discussion came from the question over coaching methods: does the ends justify the means? Nikolay Karpol (seen in the below video) was a Russian women's volleyball coach who's coaching method, although successful, also bordered on scary. I thought this was an interesting take on coaching methods and how they may vary between coaches, nationalities and sports in general.

Continuing on with the thought of coaches being performers, I got thinking about how fair it may or may not be to judge a coach in the same way that we do players. Arguably the coaches role is much more diverse and dynamic, particularly when considering their role in a team environment. How does a coach get the best out of each individual in a team when each of them is going to require an individualised approach to get them going? This problem only intensifies at the elite level when the very best performance of an athlete/team is expected on a weekly basis, forcing the coach to find ways to keep his or her methods dynamic and fresh enough that players continue to perform.

Anyway, they were some of the main ideas and thoughts that came to mind when I was thinking about the content for week 4. I'm interested to see if people agree or have taken a different approach all together?

Cheers,

Leigh.

First Time for Everything...

Like the title suggests, this is my first ever blog post! I guess like most people, I'm a bit lost for words at this point so this one will be nice and short. Basically this blog will be all about  my thoughts, ideas, experiences etc while I'm involved in Sport Coaching Pedagogy 2012. In the mean time it will be interesting to see where our lecturer, Keith, takes us with this unit. Having had him before it will no doubt be very interesting, informative and a little different. Keith's blog, Clyde Street, is well worth checking out and there is also a Facebook page set up for the unit.