Behind most successful athletes you will generally find a dedicated coach who has often spent years and deployed much effort in honing his or her craft. They can often be former athletes, who see coaching as a natural progression after retiring, or might be individuals with limited playing experience who got into coaching for various differing reasons, who started at the grassroots level, learning coaching skill sets by attending coaching courses / clinics, sharing with more experienced coaches as they move up the ranks and devouring various sources of resource materials on the topic.
Coaches must have expert knowledge about the skills, tactics, physical training and psychological preparation associated with their sport. These areas are typically the focus of coaching textbooks and manuals. Coaches must also be competent teachers, and there while are some important lessons they can learn from classroom teachers to get the best performance from their athletes, there are also many differences that can only be acquired through practical involvement with a team. I have often written that in order to be a successful coach, it must be more than a job but a calling or a passion, but the question could also be asked, is coaching an art or a science? At the end of a 27 year coaching career, I would say that from experience and personal perspective, coaching is an art that is becoming more and more heavily influenced by science. So if I consider coaching as an art, I would point out the following characteristics which I consider important. Most coaching courses regardless of the sport, contain small units on teaching skills, but coaches mostly learn in informal ways. This may be through practical experience, or with the help of a mentor. But ineffective teaching practices can be passed on if the wrong models are observed. Many athletes would relate to the experience of having an “old-school” coach prescribing endless laps while screaming and taunting, believing it to be an effective form of discipline because it was the norm “back in the day”. While coaching is a mix of both art and science, coaches should consider the impact of the strategies they select in their particular sport, competitive levels and age groups. Remaining consistent with one's personality and abilities and keeping in mind how it can impact the athletes and not simply coaching the way someone else does, or because of a gut feeling, is at the heart of effective teaching and therefore relatable to coaching. When it comes to teaching in the purest sense, over the years there have been many differing approaches to teaching that have been used and been considered as the "right way" to teach. Regardless of the approach or strategy, if you examined them on their merits individually, you would probably come to the conclusion that depending on context and environment, nearly everything works for advancing student achievement, but some interventions work better than others. A similar argument could be made for coaching, especially in youth sport where athletes improve by default as they physically mature. If every coaching strategy is assumed to work, coaches should instead focus their efforts on what works best to achieve maximum impact. An athlete’s improvement is enhanced by setting goals that are specific, appropriately challenging for their current abilities, and focused on attaining mastery rather than avoiding failure. Coaches who can foster a sense of belief in their athletes’ own abilities, and the ability of their teams (known as collective self-efficacy), may be particularly well placed to improve performance. Team cohesion has a large positive effect on sports performance, but is more effective when coaches encourage teams to rally around a shared goal rather than simply form social bonds. Coaches should also be aware of their influence on an athlete’s mental state: anger, fatigue, confusion, and tension are all associated with negative performance outcomes. More closely related to the traditional notion of teaching are findings on practice and learning strategies. It is more beneficial, for instance, to space skill training out over smaller practice sessions (distributed practice) rather than one larger session (massed practice). There is a popular belief that for an athlete to achieve true success at the highest levels, he or she requires somewhere in the area of something like 10,000 hours. However applying the notion of quality over quantity, there is a contradictory argument that might say it is more important to work with a regularly evolving, regularly evaluated string of practices instead of simply accumulating hours via repetition. However for that to be successful and have an impact, requires coaches who are deliberate in their interventions – watching, tweaking, reinforcing, teaching new strategies, and making practice enjoyable and sustaining. Coaching is an art form in the it is constantly evolving, as a coach it is important to adapt, revise, adjust and sometimes follow gut instinct when working with athletes. While there is plenty of research and documentation that provides on best coaching practices ( which when we say best, it really means best in the opinion of those who compiled the information), there is always plenty of room for growth and improvement. One area which from experience I would say is often overlooked or is difficult for young coaches to find learning tools on, is about how to help athletes better receive and use feedback. Feedback is among the most powerful influences on student achievement, so knowing how to best use feedback with athletes appears important. So one could say that the best advice any experienced coach can give younger coaches is to walk into every training session, team meeting, or pre-game talk aware of their impact. This requires coaches to be conscious of the methods they select, and to continually seek evidence to evaluate the effectiveness of each approach. ' So that is the art of coaching, now how about the science or influence of science on coaching? Every day it seems like a new piece of technology comes out and it doesn’t matter what you use, it can be hard to stay up to date. From new phones, electronics, and apps, technology continues to make major changes in almost every part of our everyday lives. In the world of sports, technology has impacted almost every aspect of playing, watching and coaching. Have those advances in technology made coaching jobs easier or harder? Depending on who you ask, you may get a different answer. In many ways though, technology has increased the demands of coaches from team management and communication, but also created new ways to get the very best out of training and performance of athletes. Whether you’re working at the grassroots or high performance level, technology has greatly impacted the way coaches and athletes train and perform. With the rise in wearable technologies, athlete monitoring systems measuring and tracking athletic progress in real time, athletes and coaches can see not only how, but how well their athletes are performing at every point in a workout and or competition. Like a machine, athletes are able to look at a dashboard that shows how their engine is running, and coaches are like their mechanics, fine tuning the engine to perform at its best. With the rise of social media, email and applications, the advances in communications has increased dramatically. The need and ability to share instant updates and information is paramount to the management of one’s team, club or league. Apps like TeamSnap exist to help coaches save time communicating and managing their teams, clubs and leagues. Acting like a central location for all of your information, you can schedule, communicate and administer every aspect, including registration online rather than paper forms! Technological advances have enabled coaches to be able to better communicate and manage everyone and all aspects of their team at the click of a button. With better communication comes faster results, timely updates, and winning outcomes. Every electronic device it seems nowadays has a camera and every coach, parent or athlete is equipped with a phone, tablet or recording device. Everything from smartphones to Imovie, tablets and mobile applications, offer the easy ability to record, review, and replay performances instantly. These technological advances have revolutionized the way coaches coach their athletes. With frame by frame analysis and performance metrics available at the press of a button, video continues to offer coaches strategic performance enhancements. Coaching can be stressful no matter which level, sport or how long you’ve been coaching and new technological advances are there to help your athletes perform better and make your job easier. From advances in training, communication, and analysis, technology will no doubt continue to evolve from where we are today. So if you've read this far, isn't coaching easy ? lol Simply put, there is no one right way to coach. Successful coaching is about using the tools that available, selecting those that best work for you and with your athletes, and applying them.... but having the awareness to continually seek out new tools. No coach ever truly reaches the pinnacle of his or her coaching development because in coaching like in life, things are always evolving and these days, seemingly evolving quicker than ever. So if you get asked, is coaching an art or a science, I guess your answer might depend on your reality. cheers
1 Comment
Teshome Hassen
7/26/2020 04:21:57 am
Is football a science or an art?
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AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
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