The development of young people in sport is directly related
with the behaviours of their significant others - namely teachers, coaches,
parents and peers.
But what behaviour
aids the best development? Is it simply enough to ‘be a good role model’ or
just be knowledgeable of the sport in which they coach?
I have witnessed
lots of training sessions in football with many different coaches, and I have
found that there are generally two different types of coaches – the Facilitator,
and the Teacher.
The Facilitator
merely sets up the drill, and lets the game be the teacher – whereby the
participants learn from their own mistakes with minimal coach intervention. The
common phrase thrown about to support this style, is that you learn from your
mistakes. That may be true, but if you don’t know you are making a mistake,
then how can you learn from it?
The Teacher on the
other hand sets up the drill and then starts the coaching. They step in
regularly with correct coaching points, offering demonstrations and asking
questions to help their players understand. In my own experience, this method
is far more successful than the Facilitator as the players are being corrected
by somebody who knows best, rather than letting an inexperienced performer try
to correct the mistakes themselves.
Using myself as an
example, when I first started coaching in 2010 I was very much a Facilitator, a
session leader, if you will. I called myself a coach, as many of you do,
however the amount of actual coaching I undertook in my sessions was actually
very little. I am strong enough to look back at myself and admit that what I
did then wasn’t what was best for my players, but under the persona we all
adopt when coaching, I made it look like I was correct. Hindsight is a wonderful
thing, and I know that the experience I have gained through a number of things
I have done since I started coaching, has made me a much better coach. I have
become more immersed in the game, and in sport development as a whole, and
being able to put my knowledge back into my coaching will have a positive
effect on the players I work with.
The most popular
style in sports coaching is the Facilitator. Because of this, players are being
expected to improve by making mistakes themselves, and thus correcting them.
But how can they correct them, if they don’t know what the right way to perform
the task is? This is when a good coach will step in and demonstrate the correct
technique and offer coaching points, sometimes using question and answer, to
aid understanding. However, this can be time consuming – stopping each group to
deliver the coaching points, and a lot of coaches get bored of saying the same
thing again and again to players, so don’t do it. But surely that is what
coaching is – getting your knowledge over to somebody else in a way that they
understand it, and can use it, in order to improve their performance?
It is a well known
fact that some coaches are better than others. However, the better coaches aren’t
always the ones with the best teams. I had a brilliant team when I first
started coaching, however most of them were part of a soccer school and had
been coached by somebody else before joining my team, so in a way, I hid behind
the success of my team and basked in their glory, although my input was largely
ineffective. That is something I have figured out myself, nobody has come up
and said this to me. I feel that if I had adopted the Teacher coaching style, then
my team could have improved even further and the players developed at a much
faster rate. In a way, I feel like I let them down.
The Teacher method
of coaching (the method you will use when doing your FA coaching badges)
demands a lot of time and effort by the coach, which is why many coaches don’t
use it. This style requires the coach to set up the drill, and then start to
coach. The coaching style is as follows.
·
Observe
·
See fault
·
Coach and correct
·
Recreate
·
Play
What this means is, the coach will observe one group at a
time doing the drill, and when he sees a fault, such as a poor shot, or a bad
pass, he will step in and coach the player. He will offer coaching points, and
even a demonstration if needed, so that the player can see what he did wrong.
The coach will then recreate the scenario, for example by playing the ball back
to the player who made the bad pass, so that he can play a different pass or
make a run. Once it has been recreated, the coach will let them play until
another mistake is made, or he goes and observes another group.
This is best
practice, because the coach is maximising playing time for the players as well
as stepping in there and offering coaching points – which are the basis for
which improvement is made. If a builder builds a house but lays the bricks wrong,
the house may collapse. If nobody tells him what he did wrong and the correct
way to lay the bricks, he will repeat the mistake and the next house will
collapse.
Sport needs more
coaches, fact. But not any old coach. It needs somebody who is willing to put
the time and effort in outside of the training session to become educated in
the sport in which the work, by learning what the key factors for each skill
is, learning the correct coaching points and knowing when to use them, figuring
out what type of coach you are and which style is best suited to you etc.
Without that time and effort, the future of sport is on a downwards facing
slope.
How can a coach
expect their players to put in the effort, if they don’t put in the effort
themselves?