Change the Coach?
Chris started his presentation by telling
us that he was not going to provide an
answer to the challenge of games.
But he then gave an insight into why
games work as a coaching
intervention, why sometimes they
might not, and how coaches can start
to use games more effectively as part
of their coaching toolkit – not
“games-as-teacher” nor just to fill in
20 minutes at the end of a coaching
session.
The overall theme for the Conference
was Change the Game and over the
weekend we were challenged to think
about how we coach, what we coach,
about the type of coach we were or
aspired to be, even about the
environment in which we coach.
Whatever I write, I know I’m not doing
full justice to the diversity of the event.
All the workshops that I attended were
challenging (in a good way!) and
thought-provoking, but I know after
speaking to colleagues who followed
different timetables that so too were
the disability coaches, coaches from
rugby and football, academics and
business coaches.
So perhaps, rather than changing the
game, we were really being challenged
to change the coach – for the better!
And we do all want to get better at
coaching, don’t we?
Coming away from St George’s Park, it
felt as if “coaching better” must now
mean more than running the same
practice (or even running new, better
practice) in the hope that the players
will finally “learn their lessons”.
As Ian Renshaw put it – players are
shaped by the environment in which
they learn to play; the clever coach
shapes that environment.
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