The Teesra

Category: philosophy

_why_ we coach; why we coach the way we do

  • What coaching is, and what is is not. Thoughts on the ECB’s “Unleashing Potential”, and why we need to be careful what we wish for.

    We all know we are “coaches”, but what are we actually doing when we coach? Is what we do working? What is “good” coaching?

    Questions we all might have asked ourselves, at some point during our coaching careers.

    Idealistically, I’d look to help a player be the best version of him- or herself rather than achieving “best fit” to an “ideal” model, only changing something if it was likely to cause serious inconsistency or lead to potential injury.

    But realistically, I wonder if that might limit a young player’s access to development pathways, if they fail the “eye test” by not “looking right”?

    There certainly used to be tales of Test prospects having their bowling actions remodelled by well-meaning coaches, and subsequently being barely able to bowl at all. You don’t hear these stories any more…I wonder if a bowler with a non-standard action would survive the pathway with their idiosyncrasies intact (if they could even get taken into the system in the first place, that is).

    And this thought has been further challenged with the publication of a pair of documents by ECB Coach Development — Unleashing Potential, Men’s & Women’s Pathway. Talent and development frameworks for “pathway leaders and coaches” (so not for the likes of me, then…).

    Challenging, and informative of the thinking of “better” coaches, perhaps.

    But Unleashing Potential poses more questions than it answers.

    (more…)

  • Whole-Part-Whole — time for another look?

    Back in 2014 I posted a simple page describing the “Whole-Part-Whole” session plan — play a game (“Whole”), coach a specific skill component relevant to that game (“Part”), then play the game, or a conditioned version of the game, again (“Whole”, again).

    Just a description, filed under “coaching resources” alongside some more traditional session plans (level 2, back then, was billed as “learning to write plans”), with no attempt to explain why it might be useful.

    Recently, the page has started to generate some more views — nothing spectacular, but as many visits in the last 12 months as in the previous 7 years.

    So I thought it might be interesting to take another look at Whole-Part-Whole (WPW), and why I still think it is a useful framework for session planning.

    (more…)

  • Q: What is “better coaching? A: It has to be more than new drills & games, more than techniques & affordances.

    There have been some interesting conversations recently around the perceived weakness of the current player development pathway in England & Wales, whether looking at the excessive cost (to parents) of inclusion on a County pathway or the impact of the relative age effect on access to and inclusion in the pathway.

    The highly selective structure of the pathway works against players born later in the (age-group selection) year. Several suggestions to offset this unintended bias against the younger players have been proposed.

    • County Age Group & District squads could be larger, and de-selection later.
    • Parallel development squads be maintained for those born later in the year.
    • Delaying selection to rep squads, with greater reliance on clubs to develop younger players (coincidentally removing the additional costs associated with County or District squads).

    Any of these approaches would require more coaches, and probably coaches with different skills.

    Possibly “better” coaches.

    But what is better coaching? I have had several attempts at defining what training might support (better) coach development, without really looking at the skills that these “better” coaches would want.

    (more…)