Becoming a Better Sports Coach

Development through Theory Application

Andreas Carlsson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367862763
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000425147
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Sport & Exercise Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

Research on coaching education and development highlights, repeatedly, the difficulties of traditional coaching education to impact coaching practice. Practice seems to be disconnected from scientific theory with few coaches accessing the scientific literature as it too often is presented in dry, academic tones. This volume sets out to provide an integration of theory and everyday practice that to date has not yet been published in the field of coaching science in a text easily used by sports coaches.

In order to bridge this theory to practice gap, Becoming a Better Sports Coach: Development through Theory Application presents theory and science connected to practice in a way that makes it possible for coaches to test, evaluate and improve upon their existing coaching practice.

This hands-on approach sets out to improve coaches' cognition and raising self-awareness as well as improve coaches' learning using specific tools for behavioural feedback and reflection. Improving on self-reflective skills and eliciting feedback on the coach's own behaviour is how coaching practice is improved. What coaching practice includes and what is laid out for coaches in this new text is motivational climate, coaching behaviours, pedagogy, feedback, coach–athlete relationship, each in one chapter. Reflection and behavioural feedback are applied to each of these areas.

1

Background

Aim of the chapter: Provide a background to research on coaching development and introduce the content and structure of the present book.

Learning goals of the chapter:

Grow an understanding of…

1. an interactive model of leadership.
2. challenges in coaching development.
3. coaches’ preferences for learning and development.

Introduction

Working as a sports coach for many years, my main focus was to develop athletes. To accomplish this goal, coaching knowledge and skill is paramount. In my quest for improved knowledge and skill, I turned to more experienced coaches as well as attended clinics and workshops. However, the discussions with coaches were often based upon our own quite arbitrary experiences. Sometimes, one coach’s account contradicted another’s. A glaring need for outside input became apparent, as the coaches I met seemed to mostly resort to their tried and proven procedures. Some explicitly referenced their coaching decades ago as a rationale for specific decisions, even though the sport had evolved considerably since then. Initially, I tried to replicate behaviours from better coaches, thinking that was the fastest way to success. Sometimes it worked out fine. Other times it had none, or almost the opposite effect to my dismay. Thus, I turned to other sources. Starting to read up on the sports coaching literature, I found numerous books presenting what could be effective in areas such as motivating and development of athletes’ technical skills. Trying out specific recommended tips, however, did not always fit together with other parts of my coaching. From these experiences, it became obvious that to develop my coaching, a deeper approach creating a greater understanding of concepts and their interrelation was needed. Coaching was certainly much more complex than copy-paste.

A curiosity for more knowledge led me to the academic world, which by many coaches was not held in very high regard, as research was viewed as too theoretic, difficult to understand or inapplicable to the world outside of universities. Once, I was even advocated not to enter into a tertiary education in sports, as this pathway ‘was not how coaches traditionally were developed’. At the same time, scholars often regretfully told stories of how sporting organizations and coaches were resistant to their advice. This ‘conflict’ between practitioners and researchers intrigued me. To me, there should be a way to merge the two sides for the benefit of both. Incorporating scientific information into my sports coaching should give me a competitive edge. At least, that was my thinking. After an extensive literature review, it was clear that scientific articles have as much variation when it comes to quality and content as there are among coaches and their practices. If not already difficult to pick out the most relevant information, many times scientific studies do not target the exact issue one is looking for. Even when they do, one single study is seldom enough to come to a sound conclusion. Clearly, there was some validity to the coaches’ suspiciousness towards research.

After a few years, I got into coaching education as an educator in the Swedish Basketball Federation. Originally, the coaching courses I ran through this national governing body (NGB) were mostly centred around a prescriptive content which, in a sometimes incoherent manner with various topics stacked on top of each other, described what coaches should do. Little, if any, energy was spent on how the coaches actually develop these skills or make judgments during everyday practices. After a typical course, participants were filled with inspiration and energy to go back to their groups of athletes and use the ‘new stuff’. Nevertheless, and not without cause, I had my own doubts about the probability of this ever materializing into major improvements in their everyday coaching. Gradually, my interest shifted from developing athletes to developing coaches. What was lacking though, was a structured way of turning theoretically based advice into coaching craft on the practice venue without being artificial or disingenuous. To solve this issue, I began investigating how to develop at craft, like sports coaching and not just what a coach should do. Surprisingly, I found a lot of useful ideas in, for sports coaches, lesser-known domains of research such as medicine and teaching. Drawing from this information, I started to develop coaching education courses for various organizations and governing bodies. This allowed me to get applied experiences in coaching development by testing out these ideas, sometimes at a rainy practice ground. Over the years, the content of this book evolved to help coaches avoid my own coaching mistakes.

By then, the challenge became spreading this knowledge to other coaches. Eventually, it was tried out in annual season-long interventions in one of the largest top-level football clubs in Sweden. An opportunity among many that I am very grateful of. In short, this has been my odyssey. Along the way, I had countless of interesting discussions and made quite a few life-long friends, without whom this journey had not been possible (nor as fun). Nowadays, many sports are moving towards having greater access to more advanced statistics and performance data than previously imagined. In a world with more information, a coach needs to be able to digest, adjust and incorporate this information into everyday coaching practice in an efficient manner. In this book, an approach for learning on the job is sketched out. This approach can be used for improving selected coaching areas within this book and others such as sport-specific content. The rest of this chapter will be devoted to presentation of an interactive model of leadership, what is known about coaching education, coaches’ learning and the setup of this book for you, the reader, to have a sound background knowledge of coaching development before digging into the subsequent chapters. With this apprehension, it is easier to appreciate the structure of the book and how it will fill a void in the world of coaching development.

For all ambitious coaches striving to get better at the coaching of everyday practices, regardless of being in the early stages of the coaching journey or being a well-travelled senior coach looking for that extra edge, this book offers something for everyone.

Interactive Model of Leadership

Leadership, or coaching, can be regarded from various perspectives. Traditionally, leadership has a long history of being viewed from the Great Man Theory. This perspective argues that great leadership is something that is innate in the leader. The person either is or is not a qualified leader. By finding the great leader, any situation or followers can be added with an equally positive outcome. An often-cited example is that of Winston Churchill, who successfully led the allied nations to victory in World War II by rallying the exhausted British people with his charismatic and effective leadership. However, what is less known is that during the First World War he was First Lord of Admiralty, but was removed after the defeat at Gallipoli. Arguably, not even Churchill was a universally successful leader. Needless to say, the Great Man perspective makes it difficult to argue for leadership development as leader identification would be more important. Fortunately, for people involved in coaching development, and not least the coaches themselves, there is ample evidence from science that leadership is something that can be developed (Avolio, Reichard, Hannah, Walumbwa, & Chan, 2009), as can be seen from such diverse domains as finance and military, not to mention sports (Wright & Côté, 2003). The person-situation interaction explains a larger part of one’s actions than personal traits alone (Mischel & Shoda, 1995). Hence, it is more effective to view leadership as a dynamic process where components of leadership interact, rather than coexist in a static disposition. This view is also supported from research investigating implicit theories (Hoyt, Burnette, & Innella, 2012), as it is essential for coaching development to view leadership as dynamic. The leadership will emerge at the point of interaction of the three components: leader (i.e., coaches), followers (i.e., athletes) and situation (see Figure 1.1).

FIGURE 1.1 Interactive model of leadership.

A big advantage of viewing leadership as not synonymous with the leader him-/herself is that the blame will not entirely fall on the leader when things go less than perfect, as is often the case when media, parents or other stakeholders are looking for short-term solutions to a struggling sports organization. With this tenet, it will be easier for the coach to observe the coaching as an object and not only from the perspective of a subject. Conversely, it is never entirely the athletes’ fault when a practice does not go as smooth as planned. Rather, the interaction between coach, athlete and situation is what counts. This implies that the same coach’s characteristics influence the leadership in different ways depending on the athletes and situation. Côté, Salmela, Trudel, Baria, and Russell (1995) proposed that coach characteristics consist of factors such as the coach’s philosophy, perception and private situation. Athlete’s characteristics include personality, skill level and previous knowledge. Situational characteristics include unstable factors neither directly related to coach nor athlete, such as working conditions, competition system or objectives from club management.

To illustrate the complex and somewhat messy environment a sports coach is working in, a short example of a fictional coach is presented here:

Instructor Ingram is coaching a group of young track athletes currently working on shot put at the infield of the stadium just inside the running track. Ingram is trying to give everyone feedback on their technique to generate maximum force. While demonstrating how deep one athlete’s knee bend was, the rest has to wait so that Ingram can observe their respective performances. One athlete waiting for his turn, getting a little bored, suddenly throws away a shot toward the running track. Ingram sees this in the corner of his eye and has to make a quick decision on how to act.

What Ingram decides to do in this situation is influenced by a number of aspects from coach, athlete and situational components. To what extent can the athletes be expected to know behavioural rules? Are there any specific cognitive or emotional issues to consider with this particular athlete? What relationship and history do Ingram have with this athlete? How will the rest of the athletes be impacted by Ingram’s decision? How are situational factors such availability of shot puts to keep the activity going or other groups of athletes who are interfered by the rolling shot put? Are there any club guidelines on how behaviours like this will be treated, and if so, how will Ingram take them into consideration in this situation? What kind of knowledge on subjects such as motivation, behavioural regulation and coach–athlete relationship does Ingram possess that can be useful in this decision? Clearly, Ingram’s decision is influenced by aspects from all three components of coaching. Coaches’ decision-making like Ingram’s will be informed by experience, knowledge and skills. Therefore, it is worthwhile to investigate how coaching knowledge and skill are best developed.

Challenges in Coaching Development

Traditional coaching education, often given from NGB’s, has repeatedly been shown to have trouble impacting coaches’ everyday practice. It is far too tempting and easy for a coach to go on with one’s business as usual, instead of implementing some of the ideas from the education. Coaches’ actions are often influenced more by experiences as an athlete, traditional procedure in the sport or cultural expectations of how a coach should act, rather than scientifically grounded information (Partington & Cushion, 2013). Reasons for ignoring new information vary from not believing in its substance to, out of pure convenience, reverting to the ‘proven and known stuff’.

Some of the challenges in coaching development presented by various researchers such as Cushion and colleagues (e.g., Cushion, Armour, & Jones, 2003; Cushion, Armour, & Jones, 2006; Nelson, Cushion, & Potrac, 2013; Stodter & Cushion, 2016) and Abraham and Collins (1998) are summarized in the following seven points:

• Everyday coaching is much harder to capture, and unstructured, than what many coaching models and advice suggest. This can hamper the possibilities to apply information or ideas in practice.
• Scientific information presented is often too technocratic and coach education is often very sport-specific in nature, sometimes entirely ignoring other parts of coaching, or in other cases covering them only briefly.
• Information presented tend to be decontextualized, which can be seen as somewhat artificial and enhance the gap between theory and practice.
• A widely recognized conceptual framework underpinning coaching is lacking. Consequently, the coach as a person and the coaching are easily viewed as synonymous and as a single entity. Thus, critical examination of coaching is hampered as critique risks being interpreted as a threat to the coach’s own person.
• Reflective skills are severely underdeveloped and often misunderstood, leading to even further difficulties in developing these elusive and valuable skills.
• Coach educators are often previously successful coaches when it comes to coaching athletes, rather than experts at developing other coaches in their endeavours, and while having practical first-hand experience is useful, it is certainly not sufficient.
• A coach’s attitude, values and biographical account can be more powerful than new information, making coaches resist change and development.

Finally, coaches need practice to dev...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• 1 Background
• 2 Coaches’ Learning and Reflection
• 3 Motivation and Motivational Climate
• 4 Coaching Behaviours
• 5 Pedagogy
• 6 Feedback
• 7 Coach-Athlete Relationship
• 8 Long-Term Development
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Index