A History of Sports Coaching in Britain

Overcoming Amateurism

Dave Day, Tegan Carpenter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317686309
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

At the London Olympics in 2012 Team GB achieved a third place finish in the medals table. A key factor in this achievement was the high standard of contemporary British sports coaching. But how has British sports coaching transitioned from the amateur to the professional, and what can the hitherto under-explored history of sports coaching in Britain tell us about both the early history of sport and about contemporary coaching practice? A History of Sports Coaching in Britain is the first book to attempt to examine the history of British sports coaching, from its amateur roots in the deep nineteenth century to the high performance, high status professional coaching cultures of today.

The book draws on original primary source material, including the lost coaching lives of key individuals in British coaching, to trace the development of coaching in Britain. It assesses the continuing impact of the nineteenth-century amateur ethos throughout the twentieth century, and includes important comparisons with developments in international coaching, particularly in North America and the Eastern Bloc. The book also explores the politicisation of sport and the complicated interplay between politics and coaching practice, and illuminates the origins of the structures, organisations and philosophies that surround performance sport in Britain today.

This book is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in the history of sport, sports coaching, sports development, or the relationships between sport and wider society.

1 Laying the foundations

Victorian coaching practices

Training knowledge is traditional and oral … imparted by mystery-men, adept professional trainers – cunning pedestrians and ancient mariners who derive their maxims from their predecessors, and polishing them by their own experience, duly instil them into the minds of admiring pupils.¹

Introduction

Ongoing industrialization and urbanization transformed the way in which sport in Britain was played and managed during the nineteenth century. A significant increase in disposable income, improved transport links and the influx of individuals from rural into urban areas, altered the amount of space and structured time available for leisure. Taken together, these factors subsequently encouraged the middle-class development of sporting rules, the creation of voluntary sporting organizations, and the consolidation of class distinction in sport. For much of the century, however, it was the working-class professional sportsman, and occasionally sportswoman, who held centre stage. Eighteenth-century pugilism was superseded in the early 1800s by pedestrianism, the forerunner of track and field athletics, as the preferred gambling and spectator sport of the lower classes, but professional rowing and swimming were also extremely popular. The majority of contestants, particularly in the first half of the century, employed professional trainers who utilized training systems based fundamentally on methods developed during the previous century, when social changes had stimulated the activities of sporting entrepreneurs. In London, George Smith sponsored foot racing and cricket at the Artillery Ground, William Kemp ran the Peerless Pool, where waiters taught swimming, while combat sports were commercialized by James Figg, whose pupil John (Jack) Broughton, subsequently opened an amphitheatre, dedicated to the ‘Manly Art of Boxing’. Boxing became a significant feature of the cultural landscape for all classes by 1800 and invariably involved contests between working-class individuals backed by wealthy patrons who tried to improve their chances of success by putting their pugilists into training programmes.² A combination of Enlightenment thinking and increasing industrialization had stimulated the concept of achievement through improved performance, resulting in a commitment to systematic training programmes on the basis that training schemes, based on scientific principles, could extend the performance of humans beyond their God-given abilities.³

Commentators clearly distinguished between the acquisition of technique, ‘science’ or ‘art’, and ‘wind’ or fitness, as well as referring to ‘bottom’, or ‘game’, the ability to endure the severity of an opponent’s blows. Although there were differences in the level of importance allocated to the various aspects of performance, there was unanimity that while some were naturally endowed others could be improved. Good wind, for example, could be established and enhanced by training and regularity of living, normally under the supervision of expert trainers, who drew on their own experiences, and an oral tradition surrounding pugilist training, to devise their regimes. The elements that underpinned these training programmes were part of the accepted wisdom of the period regarding health and its dependence on the six non-naturals of air, food, exercise, the passions, evacuation and retention, sleeping, and waking. Training practices were also influenced by humoral theory, which held that bodies were comprised of the four humours of earth, fire, water and air, each having its associated characteristic of melancholy, choler, phlegm or blood. The work of the trainer was to address humoral imbalances through a programme of diet, exercise and medication. The body was prepared by being well purged and cleared of all ill humours by taking medicines over two or three days. The first day purged the bowels, the second the liver and the third the ‘reins’ in which lay the ‘drain’ of the ill humours.

Fighters ‘in training’ were supervised in all aspects of their lives for between ten days and six weeks and, because it was believed that the best quality air was found in rural areas, trainers normally took their men out of town. Diet was strictly controlled and particular hours of rest and recreation were observed throughout the training period. Exercise consisted of sparring, using dumbbells or walking, but avoided creating fatigue, and both fighter and trainer were advised to avoid excess in food, wine or women. This regime was described as having been ‘laid down and approved by many scientific men’,⁴ although training programmes were not always uniform in nature and it was recognized that specific training schemes could produce different outcomes. Towards the end of the century, Fewtrell declared that little more remained to be done to improve the sport since ‘no labour, no expense had been spared to attain perfection and every manoeuvre, every finesse, which the mind could suggest, or the body execute, had been attempted’.⁵ In 1800, it was being argued that a full understanding had been achieved of the importance of endurance, courage and technique, and Mendoza observed in 1816 that boxing had ‘been wrought into a regular system and elevated even to the rank of a science’.⁶

By this time, the sporting landscape of England was populated by a number of professionals who represented backers in a range of sports such as pedestrianism, which had been a regular competitive feature at festivals, fairs, race meetings and cricket matches, since the seventeenth century. Pedestrian events included hurdling, leaping over a height or for distance (either from a standing position or from a run), hop, step and jump, and vaulting, although the main disciplines were running and race walking, in which the heel touched the ground before the toes. There were also staged events in which solitary pedestrians competed in specific challenges against distance and time, and the sport, which had always been associated with a culture of gambling, was gradually formalized and contained within specialized running arenas as entrepreneurs began to develop the activity as a spectacle. By the mid-nineteenth century, several pedestrians had become national celebrities and pedestrianism had replaced pugilism as the major spectator sport of the working classes in the years immediately before the advent of organized football.

Trainers and coaching communities

Pedestrianism’s organizational development had paralleled that of pugilism, and, given that trainers, backers and athletes moved easily between different sports, it is not surprising that training regimes and traditions also migrated seamlessly from one sport to another. Partly because of the physical demands of the sport, a career as a professional fighter was unlikely to be a long one so good fighters capitalized on their reputations by turning to teaching boxing skills or giving exhibitions. Many practitioners also developed careers as trainers, often using their experiential knowledge to prepare rowers and pedestrians in addition to fellow pugilists. The combination of emerging scientific and medical knowledge, part of the intellectual currency of many patrons, with practitioner experiences and observations resulted in rationalized programmes of physical and technical training. Going ‘into training’ in rural areas for periods of six to eight weeks and beginning with purging and sweating before moving on to a strict regime of diet and exercise remained the norm, as did engaging a professional trainer to oversee the process.

Sir John Sinclair recorded some of the oral traditions and practices of these men in 1806 and his Code of Health and Longevity in 1807 drew on this material, as well as on medical and Classical sources, to describe regimes that were beginning to integrate more exercise, but, in essence, represented a refinement, not a replacement of traditional training programmes. When Robert Barclay turned to training, he used his own experiences as an athlete from working under pugilistic trainers and ex-pedestrian Jacky Smith, to devise a schedule for prizefighter Tom Cribb that reduced his weight by over two-and-a-half stone and improved his wind and strength so much that he had an easy victory over Molyneaux in 1811. Barclay’s approach was considered ‘completely scientific’⁷ and such men became even more central in sporting activities during the early nineteenth century as training systems gradually became more complex.

In 1836, Walker observed that the art of training had reached ‘a degree of perfection almost incredible’. Trainers, who generally emerged from within the activity and used their own methods, understanding of skills, and approaches to contests, to underpin their training advice, were encouraged to use their judgement and avoid following rigid training rules. They generally began by assessing an athlete’s constitution, personality and habits, in order to assess how best to organize the training elements, which they then monitored closely. Training condition was assessed by whether the sweats stopped reducing weight and by the athlete’s time for a mile at top speed, a good result confirming either that his condition was perfect or that he had ‘derived all the advantages which can possibly result from the training process’.⁸ Each practitioner also experimented in applying emerging knowledge, accepting or rejecting appropriate material, thereby adding something to the training process, particularly in periods of educational, commercial and scientific advances. Their ‘know-how’ underpinned sports training for much of the century, partly because it proved highly effective in developing athletes well beyond the capacities of their contemporaries. George Seward recorded 9.25 seconds for the 100 yards in 1844, Henry Reed registered 48.5 seconds for the 400 yards in 1849 and William Jackson ran eleven miles 40 yards in one hour in 1845.

Despite their acknowledged expertise, these early trainers were never entirely independent and the demands of their patrons imposed constraints on their behaviour. Dowling thought that a trainer should be intelligent and firm in his manner, flexible in his opinions about the use of ‘medicines’, open to instruction and ‘willingly obedient to the rules laid down for his guidance’. It was essential that he was ‘faithful’ and backers should investigate this thoroughly since a trainer could be tempted by ‘some unknown agent to swerve from his duty’. Once engaged, it was necessary to closely monitor a trainer’s movements. For his part, the trainer must report progress truthfully to the backers because ‘if he be found falsifying even in trivial matters, he will not be trusted when he tells truths of importance’.⁹ Gradually, though, as these men became more influential and gained a degree of financial independence, they began to take more control of their environments.

The athletic ‘stable’

Pedestrianism provided a career path from competitor to trainer and, as the sport replaced pugilism as the passion of the working classes, the communities that coaches operated within changed, driven primarily by the financial returns associated with gambling.¹⁰ Competitors and coaches regularly engaged in various forms of deceit, often based on a ‘stable’ of runner, coach and fellow athletes, which acted as a unit for betting purposes, examples of which emerged in the North-West of England during the first half of the century. Bolton publican Ben Hart, who was racing in the 1830s, had gained fame as a trainer in the 1840s, when his training system was described as ‘decidedly the best adapted for the end designed’, and by 1846, Hart and his head trainer, Thomas Wolfenden, were fully employed with four men training in their ‘stud’ at Newton.¹¹ In 1851, Hayes, trained by Hart, beat Tetlow, trained by James Parker, a beer seller from Preston, whose own training system was ‘not to be surpassed by any professional of the present day’.¹²

While Parker’s involvement included officiating and promoting, aficionados of pedestrianism were most familiar with him as ‘Jerry Jem’, the ‘celebrated trainer’, and an analysis of Bell’s Life reports from the 1840s to the 1860s suggests that he trained at least a hundred pedestrians, the majority of them sprinters. Like Hart, Parker used his premises as a training centre for groups of athletes and his obituary recalled that ‘so widely did his reputation extend that men from all parts of the country were placed in his charge’ with as many as nine men in his stable at any one time. In 1851, the census recorded a number of well-known ‘peds’ staying in his house, including George Eastham, Joseph Whitehead, John Harris, Joseph Holmes and John Saville. Eastham, Saville (later the proprietor of the Pedestrian Tavern in Oldham) and John Fitton (another prominent member of Jerry’s ‘stud’), all subsequently turned to training. Parker died in 1871 and his life course captures the involvement typical of the many individuals in this period that emerged from an activity and then placed themselves at the centre of a community that organized and developed the sport. In a manner reminiscent of Gramsci’s notion of the organic intellectual, Parker engaged through oral traditions with his athletes, the wid...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Laying the foundations: Victorian coaching practices
• 2. Coaching before the First World War
• 3. The inter-war years
• 4. Post-1945 coaching initiatives
• 5. British coaching in the 1950s and 1960s
• 6. Cold War influences
• 7. Coaching, science and medicine
• 8. Structural changes and British coaching
• Conclusion
• Index