no coaches allowed
like the keep out sign on a treehouse
Throughout the month of March, I have been captivated by a thread about coaching that may seem counterintuitive. What if we didn’t have any?
Now, keep in mind that this newsletter is my open, authentic internal monologue, that is not drafted or pre-planned but emergent when I sit down to write in the middle and end of every month. So please, curiously join me on this journey.
I think we overestimate the positive impact that sport coaches have on young people, especially in more recent times. I am not arguing that they don’t add value, as they absolutely do, but that value feels more negative as of late.
A recent thread by Big Picture Soccer brilliantly captured the flow that coaches are trying to influence, in the hopes of causality. We wish that our actions as a coach could influence the game or the player directly, because that would be so much easier and faster and smoother. From the sideline, I can *obviously* see what needs to happen, why won’t you listen to me when I tell you to do that?
I remember learning about performance analysis very briefly in my undergrad sport science studies. I always found it funny that we use camera angles that nobody ever really sees when they are live in the moment. Why would I want to see what the game looks like from an expensive, portable camera tower when the game I am playing is on the ground, all around me?
I get that it helps show where I am in space, formations or even the opposition, but I can’t use that information on ground level, in the moment. I can maybe try and pay better attention to what’s happening, maybe by swivelling my head to check if I’m in formation with my teammates, or hear a call/see a signal from the opposition that might suggest a particular play, but I could do that without the camera footage if asked the right question or allowed to explore that moment and and report back these elements of the game.
Again, it is worth reiterating here that I am not saying ‘coaches are all bad’ to suggest that your, individual coaching is lacklustre. And when I criticise practices or activities, I am not doing so in a personal attack, but rather a practical one. Is that activity really doing what you think it’s doing? Have you ever asked yourself that question?
I bring up my mediocre performance analysis skills and disclaimers because I wanted to illustrate the continuation of my unintentional coaching discussion last time.
I received a question around what could no coaching look like, really? If I’m saying that most coach interventions are not helpful, when would they be? And how much do you “let people go” and “do their own thing” - which is always said in a negative, mocking tone of voice, even though autonomy is something we crave.
For the moment, coaching often looks or feels a lot like this. If its not a wall of sound, the session is a coach’s fingerprint. The learners are subjected to the session, and verbal feedback is provided whether they want it or not.
I feel like for every time I wanted to yell back “I KNOW” to a coach who jumped in when I made an “error”, telling me how to fix it, they should have to be silent for a minute (each). Of course my energy against unintentional coaching is largely drawn from my own personal experiences, and that exasperated feeling of never really being challenged, or taken seriously, or pushed to find my limits in ways that actually mattered to the game (not just running around the oval).
More importantly, what I value as a coach is not *just* based on my own personal experiences, but also the collective wisdom of those who come before me, the storytellers and scientists who have asked the questions before I knew to ask them, and the young people in front of me.
Which brings me to the ideas that struck me while trying to think of an alternative. One of the common threads in my rich discussions around this topic is that nobody would learn anything, or that they need support learning the fundamentals.
I always found that argument funny, because people usually point to parks or public basketball courts or cul-de-sacs to ask when they were taught the fundamentals, and those moments are met with silence. Your own definition of ‘fundamental’ will play an instrumental role here.
I am amazed at how quickly a plastic cricket stump can turn into a lightsaber any time I work with really young children. Some of them make the noise, others just wield them like a weapon, regardless of whether they’ve seen it done before. If you think about it, the grip they use to pick up this plastic cylinder as a weapon is not far away from how you would hold a tennis racquet, or a cricket bat handle. But their intention is to whack someone/thing with it, so whether or not they can do so is what matters here.
(to see if I was making any sense, I picked up my small cylindrical water bottle and proceeded to make all of those shapes - method acting for newsletter writing)
So is it as simple as putting a big red ball down on the ground and asking them to whack that as far as they can in one shot to shift that grip? I think up to a point, it is.
To illustrate this, I shifted the colouring in my next sketch intentionally (← practice what you preach hehe). I wanted to show what it looks like to contribute to the flow, maybe shift it slightly, but not hold on too tightly to causality. We do not really know what a change, an instruction, a loud sigh, a piece of advice, or even eye contact can do to the next moment. That change, however big or small, is not guaranteed to make a proportionately big or small change on the rest of the system, or change anything at all.
I also wanted to show when that coach may be brought into the fold to interrupt that flow in helpful ways. We become immediately concerned that no help is available if a coach is not present. I think this undermines peer support, as often the help we need isn’t tech/tac, but the encouragement to keep going when the ‘errors’ become overwhelming or frustrating.
In my experience, I have seen this interesting orbit emerge. When someone gets to the point where they just cant do it alone, they begin to orbit me (as the coach). It doesn’t have to be explicitly for my help, sometimes it’s just to tell me something, share a piece of their world with me, and continue back into the fray. This interaction is learner-initiated, and they know that I am right there to touch base with whenever *they* need, not when I deem them to need it.
Now, to avoid the meltdown where people get past the point of seeking help, I try to co-design some clear expectations around what learning will look and feel like. If the activity we’ve designed is challenging, then I try to describe all the things I think, feel and do in those challenging moments to normalise the wide gamut of thoughts, emotions and actions. I’m really good at describing niche errors, like that blood-boiling feeling of coming within millimetres of hitting a target and not knowing how you got that close so you have to find it alllll over again!
But the next time you find it, that process will be easier and probably faster. And you’ll be stronger for it too, because there will be infinite times when you miss by a millimetre again, but it will not be the exact same millimetre. So you need to trust in your ability to solve that problem, not just to execute a movement.
I think this orbit is the sweet spot between unsupported, unsafe learning environments that leave learners drowning in the deep end when they cannot do something by themselves and the overbearing, coach-dominated landscape. When learners want to target something specific, or find a moment they want to explore, we can work *with* them to recreate that moment in a realistic way.
My next YouTube video will be about “fun-damentals”, and what makes sport fun for young people, which will complement this little ramble nicely :)
Thanks for sharing these thoughts!