High-Performance Coach Education

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broader thinking

WIDE-SCIENCE TRANSFORMING COACHING, DEVELOPMENT AND PERFORMANCE

Coach education today.. involves models, plans, standards, and athlete-centered, game-based, constraints-led coaching. All these coaching approaches come from social sciences using laboratory methods.

Few coach educators know that social sciences have advanced. Paradigms, or frames, guide the gathering of scientific knowledge. As more science is done, more problems are found, and the paradigm moves on, in ways overcoming those problems.

Social science paradigms are three frames moved on from those used in coaching. Old frames are never wrong, new frames just offer more help. One concern is that because lab science is precise, knowledge has to reduces to tiny parts.

If the parts are bigger or there are too many, the measures can’t be accurate, or trusted. It’s never clear how the parts connect; what parts are most important; how many parts are needed; how changing one part changes the whole; or how parts change in real-life.

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A NEW COACHING PERSPECTIVE

WHY A NEW COACHING PERSPECTIVE IS NEEDED

There are further problems.. with coaches using social lab sciences. If you reduce what’s measured, everything else reduces too: what’s seen, thought, done; what the problems/solutions are; how to connect and so on.

As well, if you reduce any knowledge small enough, it will always be true. And because it is assumed true, it will always have to be done, no matter how small it is, and how much context left out.

Coach knowledge fixes. Another part to add-on and must-[remember]-to-do. Yet sport takes place in everyday real-life: uncontrolled, complex, messy, and it’s too hard for athletes to adapt.

Not only that, in real-life, you can’t avoid people. You depend on them. Don’t interact, don’t thrive, and sadly, don’t survive. “Relating-to-others-sharing-knowledge” is being human.

Human relations are never straight-forward, simple or obvious.. they're affected by "thousands of unseen-realities". Knowledge, even science, is never pure, it's shaped, altered, filtered. Knowledge always changes. It cannot not.

If coaches want the best knowledge then, they need human-relational knowledges to help.

You help coaches find unique and creative ways of solving problems they always face, in ways I've never seen before.

Dr. Itay Basevitch, Anglia-Ruskin University

For a coach and staff willing to experiment with this work, even to a small degree, their would be instant waves on their team fostering dramatic change.

Andy Holmes, Power 5 Football S&C Coach

OVER-ARCHING GUIDES FOR THINKING

Coaches are given brilliant education of leaves.. but they can’t see the trees. It may sound trite, but it is also undeniably true. With such limited visions coaches are, unknowingly, coaching with a handbrake on.

The most progressive social science paradigm.. combines sociology and psychology, to develop robust and systematic theories, sharpened by decades of fierce debate among the world's strongest minds, that explain many of the thousands of unseen realities, shaping real-life.

So when science states X or Y, coaches also see.. a, b, t, d, m, o, k, l, r, h, e, z, q, and many, many more, and depending on the situation flex X to make better decisions.

Our coach education then.. moves coaches from models to overarching guides for flexible thinking, bringing parts together, re-thinking what to do: see-more, think-broader, do-better.

SOCIAL THEORY AS APPLIED SPORT SCIENCE

Every coach knows the science-practice gap. But what they don’t know is social theories, that have transformed all human academic disciplines, explains the practice part. They’ve just never been used as a sport science to improve performance: until now.

With no theoretical-intellectual [robust, systematic, trustworthy] explanations of practice, everyday real-life, or human-relational knowledge, coaches have to call themselves “pracademics”, or appeal to “art and science”.

Used to improve performance.. social theory bridges the science-practice chasm. Because social theory is a tool guiding us across the vast, open and bewildering everyday real-life spaces, just as GPS guides boats across vast, open, bewildering oceans. Good luck crossing the ocean without it. Maybe that’s why, at the moment, in sport:

- abuse and bullying numbers are shocking;

- under-performance, injury, anxiety, mental health are common;

- tough love or verbal abuse are confused;

- drop-out is huge (more kids take up e-sports);

- coaching winners or coaching ethically are debated.. when they're

actually the same thing!

INTERESTED? See Module 1 (eight videos) below

VIDEO PLATFORM: MODULE 1

I can't emphasize enough, the wild changes to the clear ideas I had about coaching, in the last seven months, to those I have now.

Nikki Kenyon, USA Women's Rugby team

Winning ethically

Learning is "a lot more" than giving-knowledge. True learning involves using-knowledge: trying, failing, resolving ambiguity, false starts, hands-on explorations, imaginations, deep engagement, trial and error, discovering new relationships, bringing elements together, and so on.

We run flexible and fluid workshops, clinics and communities based on our comprehensive research program informed by French post-structuralist philosophy. Nine theoretically guided areas of development crossing all sports sciences.

I thought it far-reaching at first, but the shift from individual solving his or her problems, to the environment being shaped to support and develop the individual... is powerful.

I have noticed both mine and my anxious friend's confidence dramatically increase.

Shelly Collins, Psychology Undergraduate, University of Calgary

Coach Education Workshops and Clinics

COACH CONSULTING

We work as consultants with individual, groups, teams or institutions, on any of our learning areas or specific coach-driven issues. We are fluid and flexible with the development we offer.

COACH CLINICS

In our clinics/workshops, specific coaching issues are “workshopped”, or coaches bring their own issues to a clinic, and solutions guided by our theoretically-inspired coaching tools.

LEARNING COMMUNITIES

Coach learning communities (max no. 8) ensure personal, intensive, deep learning) meeting at pre-arranged times: read, think, discuss, debate, learn, read again and so on (think coach book club)

Cost: 6 session term $300 (run over 12 weeks)

LEADER CONSULTING

High-performance coaching and leadership are synonymous. In the same ways we provide education for high-performing coaches, we do so for high-performing leaders too. Because at the moment, their education comes from the first paradigm of psychology: lists of fixed must-do" behaviours. We change that.

Coach Education Video Platform - Module one (below)

Taking advantage of the latest technologies, access our channel of easy-to-find-and-use video bolstered by a range of interactive, flexible and fluid learning resources. Pick and choose your learning and development.

Module one - Revealing more. Culture as an applied sport science is below. A further eleven modules coming soon.

Coach Education Curriculums - For NGO's, Institutions and Clubs.

To coach ethically and produce winning athletes, we offer Coach Education Curriculums based on our comprehensive applied research and teaching program informed by French post-structuralist philosophers. We have created a number of original and innovative learning activities in nine areas of development that theoretically guides and directs coaches in NSO's, sports organizations/institutions and teams:

Identify inherent constraints in everyday coaching practices that could be compromising coach-athlete relationships;
Explain how many current coaching behaviours could be disempowering and undermining their athletes' development';
Think critically, look beyond the obvious or beneath the surface, ask the difficult questions that reveal what would otherwise be hidden;
Implement fluid and flexible training practices that can be adapted to their athletes’ specific needs and situations;
Demonstrate a critical and responsible use of data/technology;
Develop long-lasting, truly ethical (which by definition is effective) cultures;
Coach with a greater appreciation and awareness of how to be open-minded, inquisitive, comfortable with ambiguity, humble, collaborative, trustworthy, playful, patient, empathetic, creative, curious, courageous, confident, resilient, balanced and realistic.