The Teesra

Category: coaching

  • Coach education — minimum set?

    I recently updated my CV (no, I am not applying for new jobs, just a periodic review and trim) and it is now overflowing with CPD courses — mostly interesting, and all relevant in some way to the work I am doing, but I suspect that only a few will actually change how I coach (for the better, hopefully).

    Which set me wondering about the “minimum set” of qualifications required to call yourself a coach?

    What are the most important lessons from coach education — formal qualification, ongoing CPD, informal learning — lessons that have fundamentally shaped the way I coach?

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  • Make the sport fit the child, not the child fit the sport — thoughts on iCoachKids

    Really interesting video from the iCoachKids project, on “making the sport fit the child, not the child fit the sport”

    Some of the concepts discussed might appear obvious, but I thought it was very helpful to see how the video (and the associated activities on the MOOC) provides a framework to think about why and how to adapt and differentiate activities in children’s sport.

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  • What is fun, anyway?

    I think there is growing agreement that sports coaching for children needs to be “fun” if coaches are to engage and retain players in their programmes.

    Fun has been identified as a key component driving engagement in kids sport in numerous studies (see Bailey et al., cited in the iCK MOOC Developing Effective Environments for Children in Sport).

    The word “fun” appears in 46 posts on this blog — that is nearly 25% of posts published since I started The Teesra in 2009.

    But what actually is “fun”?

    And is it always a good thing?

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