Applied Coaching Research Journal Research Journal 1 | Page 40

APPLIED COACHING RESEARCH JOURNAL 2018, Vol. 1
The growth of the fitness orientation
While recent research has looked at the mental
well-being benefits of being a volunteer 3 , no
research has considered physical activity or health.
None of the 28 different motivations found by
Cnaan and Goldberg-Glen in their review of the
literature mentioned physical activity. The closest
they described was volunteering as a way to vary
daily activities. This may be due to the fact that the
more general volunteering literature does not focus
specifically on sport and activity. However, research
into the motivations of sport coaches has also
tended to ignore these benefits.
When Busser and Carruthers used the Volunteer
Function Inventory to examine the motivations of
youth sport coaches, they found that the strongest
functional motives were altruistic (values) and
personal growth (understanding), but of the 30
functions they tested, none related to physical
activity or health.
New evidence from physical education has
suggested changing motivations, especially among
young people, in line with societal trends around
health and fitness. In 2017 Richards et al identified
what they called a “fitness orientation” among
young recruits within physical education training.
They found that an interest in health and fitness
was leading contemporary recruits to careers in
physical education as a way to affect childhood
fitness.
Taking this a step further it is interesting to ask
if a fitness orientation could be applied to the
outcomes for volunteer coaches. The positive
health benefits of physical activity are well
established and if coaches are more active
through their coaching then they are likely to
be experiencing a health benefit outside the six
listed in the Volunteer Function Inventory.
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Testing the idea
Combining the new ideas coming out of physical
education with volunteer motivation research raises
two interesting questions around coaching:
Does being a coach provide fitness benefits?
And therefore:
Could fitness be an additional benefit of
volunteering and used to recruit and retain
volunteer coaches?
Asking the questions
In August 2017 UK Coaching surveyed 20,000
adults about taking part in sport and activity and
coaching 4 . Of these, 1,350 had coached within the
last 12 months. The survey considered coaching
in its broadest sense and a coach was anyone who
had coached, instructed, trained, taught or led any
sport or physical activity, to children or adults.
This included any environment, such as formal
sports club settings as well as informal community
settings. It could include any sport or physical
activity, including recreational or competitive sport,
exercise, fitness, gym, dance, etc.
Two questions related to physical activity and
health were asked in the survey. The first question
was asked only to coaches. Thinking about their
coaching activity they were asked how much they
agreed or disagreed with the statement “coaching
keeps me physically active”. The second question
was asked to everyone in the sample and asked
them to rate their physical health rating on a scale
of one to five (excellent to poor).