Monday 11 March 2013

Sharing vs Competition - My thoughts

The thing I like most about this unit is that is not the same as other coaching units I've done in the past. The almost unorthodox way the unit presents content challenges my ideas and has me questioning my coaching pedagogy each week.

Ive always assumed the more competitive a game, a sport or a league the better the quality and enjoyment of that sport would be. When I play a sport and it gets competitive the game gets exciting; everyone plays their hardest and the results of the game are more important. Competitive spirit also effects sport in a similar way when I'm just watching. When I know two opposing teams really want to beat the other team, or even hate the other team, its always an exciting game to watch.

Some of the ideas in the lectures and practicals this week has challenged my ideas on competition. We need each other to progress, learn and evolve as humans and as athletes (social learning theory). Sports team could all be better if they shared information and helped each other to get better but the intense desire of competition to win stops this sharing of information for fear of making opponents betters. The problems is though if we didn't have any competitive spirit there wouldn't be a want to win and the quality of the game would also decrease.

I found in the pracs on Friday that once we all helped each other with skills we all became better and the fairness of the game became greater too but the competition of the game didn't decrease, in fact i believe it increased. Just like with my example above about watching an exciting game, if one team is obviously less skillful the game isn't competitive or exciting at all.  I think the key is for everyone to share and help each other become better, which will lead to a fairer, better quality of game which in turn will actually make the game more competitive and exciting.

Sunday 3 March 2013

Feedback, perspective and self learning

As coaches, the feedback we give is one of the most important things we can give or not give our athletes and students. On Friday in the practical class I was selected coach of my team which put in the position to start thinking about what and I'm going to say (feed forward/back).

Feedback and advise is needed to some extent from the coach if the coach is going to provide some help and motivation to the athlete but too much feedback has been shown to produce athletes with a need of extrinsic motivation and dependent on the coach (Schmidt & Wulf, 1996).

I think the key is to give a decent amount of knowledge of results and performance at the beginning levels and then slowly reduce the feedback and have the athlete question their own performance as they progress. At the beginning level of a sport or activity, people need help with knowledge, motivation and an understanding but to be a successful athlete, you need to be able think, motivate and improve by yourself.

When I was coaching my team on Friday I, a basketball player and coach had a lot of things I thought I could say to my players. I had to hold my self back with a lot of things as I didn't want to overwhelm them with information and for them to feel I needed to tell them to do something they knew how to do. I did yell a lot though as the players weren't experienced with basketball and I thought I could motivate and guide them. Saying this I probably still said too much as these were all experienced athletes who understood the fundamentals of invasion games and team sports and could motivate and think for themselves.
If I were to continue to coach this team I would reduce the feedback overtime and provide means for them to being questioning their performance with no feedback from me.  

I don't think a lot of the yelling (feedback/forward) from coaches you see at professional levels is necessary. If you watch most sports the coach will constant be yelling at his team. From what we've just said, this might do more harm then good. These players have been playing the sport their whole lives and probably know exactly what happen and what went right or wrong and why. I think some of this act is because they're in the spot light and people expect them to do it because everyone else does it and it looks like they're not trying if they don't.

"Saying nothing... sometimes says the most" - Emily Dickinson

My favourite coach, and the coach with the most NBA championships (10) Phil Jackson had a zen like approach to his coaching and did sometimes get mad, but for the most part seemed calm, controlled and quite on the bench.

"Believe in your players..... this can be shown in hard times by putting them out there and letting them survive".

Planning programs and coaching to all levels, accepting compromise

Planning programs is rarely straight forward with a 'one size fits all' solution. Everyone is different and changing which means programs should be individualised and progressively changing too. However programs also need to be adaptable, realistic and easily applied to large groups (such as in a PE lesson).

Most athletes and students will have different goals, recovery levels, skills etc. which makes it difficult to individualise training for students in a PE setting or group training session as a coach. We as coaches must except there will always be a difference among athletes and compromise to find the balance. I believe the assets of the players should be identified with the first few training sessions. Using this information a coach can then plan a lesson or practice accordingly. I believe a coach shouldn't teach to optimism the best player or the worst but find a middle point where all players can make improvements and then increase the volume, frequency and intensity of the sessions as the whole class adapts.

For example, if i were running a random style training session (a game) of basketball with a new team I would have to consider ever players fitness in order to have a quality training session and to stimulate a positive training effect. If I knew player A is experienced and plays regularly but player B is new to basketball and hasn't exercised in a while a compromise would have to be made. With a random practice (aiming for encoding specificity) I could, for example, run a game with 7 minute quarters, benching the players such as player B at regular intervals, with player A (and similar players) playing most of every quarter. Regular quarters go for 10 mins which means player A should be able to handle 7 mins straight without overload, though this should be enough volume to cause improvement. A large majority of the players might struggle to play 10 mins straight so 7 mins gives them less volume to recover from. Players such as player B might be overloaded with as little as 7 mins so are taken out of the game at times. As all the players adapt the time and intensity of the quarters can be increased.
All players are within their optimal training zones and should all make adaptions of fitness without being overloaded or effecting the quality of the training session.