how the game is played, and the environment in which it is played
There have been several recent allegations of abusive coaching behaviours in British Olympic and Paralympic sports.
Not in any way to condone what has been reported recently, but I find it difficult to believe the coaches involved are (or started out as) the bullies and abusers they are now revealed (alleged) to be. Or that any coach went into sports intending to provide performance enhancing drugs to his athletes?
(more…)I was very taken by this infographic from Alex Lascu, and the thinking behind it.
It captures so much of what I believe is good about current coaching practice, but also sets a high standard for “talent pathway” coaches to aspire to.
There was some discussion on Twitter of the applicability of the advice to grassroots coaching.
One senior coach commented that he believed that most clubs ran a “talent” development programme, even if that wasn’t the label it was given. We are all looking to find and develop talented players…although, for some of us, “talent” might be the ability to mix with team mates, to muck in and get things done around the club, rather than bowl at 85 mph and hit 90m bombs, 360°.
I believe strongly in a joined-up development pathway, with best practice and ideology shared across the game, from Test to primary school. It makes sense (to me) if we all (Performance/Talent, Development, Grassroots) followed a similar philosophy.
So what follows is my attempt to re-position Alex’s guidelines very specifically for the grassroots coach.
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Last week, I sat in on a webinar, organised by Essex Cricket in the Community (ECiC), that featured a talk from Anthony McGrath, Head Coach of the 2019 County Championship and T20 Blast Double Winners.
I was fascinated to hear about the culture that “Mags” is creating in the 1st XI Squad at Chelmsford and, importantly, how that same culture applies across the Academy and Development Pathway.
Maybe this sort of sharing goes on all the time. I have little contact with the development pathway or the pro game.
But as a grassroots children’s coach, I find this sort of information really helpful. If I am to shape a culture in the environment I work in (coach as environmental and cultural engineer), surely it makes sense if it can match that higher up the pathway (assuming that culture is healthy and positive, of course — this most certainly seems to be).
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The Teesra 