Table Tennis England The Winning Edge Issue 8 | Page 5

A PHILOSOPHY FOR SUCCESS
n the previous edition of The Winning
Edge we highlighted our new Level 3
course, which looked beyond technique
and into the mental side of coaching. Greg
Baker has been on that course and, below,
he expands on those ideas and reveals the
philosophies that underpin his attitude to sport. When I first went into coaching I thought technique
was everything. I was someone who’d be all about
telling players what to do. Through watching, thinking
and going on courses like this – including with other
sports, where you realise how similar coaches are
throughout all sports – I’ve been able to become a
better learner, and I think that the best coaches and
athletes are the ones who can learn to become better.
What stood out on the Level 3 was that there was no
technical training. Previous Level 3 courses I’d been on
were quite focused on the best ways to coach certain
technical aspects of the game, but they didn’t really go
into how to put that across – different learning styles
and leadership styles. Part of that is sharing experiences and stories among
the whole coaching community. We can’t have a
mindset where performance coaches only talk to other
performance coaches. We can learn plenty from club
and school coaches too.
For instance, we spent time on the new Level 3 looking
at transformational leadership, where we get players to
spend time thinking on their own about training. We
have open discussions with them – more ask instead
of tell.
Linked to that was the constraints-based coaching,
where you’re ultimately getting athletes to make
decisions on their own under pressure instead of
being told what to do, which leaves them stuck when
they’re on their own in a competition, faced with an
unfamiliar scenario.
The course also got us to try out those different
methods and ideas when coaching different sports,
which allowed us to reflect on what worked and what
we could do better.
There was a big focus on reflective practice, which is
something I’ve always had a lot of time for. With that
you highlight the feelings involved in coaching – what
the coach is going through, why they are reacting a
certain way to a situation – so it’s not just thinking
about the athlete. Sometimes a coach has to look at
the coach first. If we understand what we’re going
through then we can better understand what others
could be going through. To influence other people,
which is at the heart of coaching, you’ve got to have
emotional intelligence, and reflective practice is a
great way to work on that.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have been on a lot of
leadership programmes with UK Sport, so my coaching
philosophy was already in place before the Level 3, but
what we worked on on that course helped cement my
ideas about how best to deliver coaching.
Greg Baker (left)
embraces Rob
Davies after his
gold at the Rio
Olympic Games
My philosophy is all about creating a learning
environment and involving athletes in their training
programme so they can take ownership and be
accountable for their performances. My values are trust,
respect and togetherness – that’s how I coach and
that’s the philosophy I bring to the British Para squad.
For example, there is a greater need at club level for
running drills, because the players haven’t reached
their best technical state yet. What they could learn
from myself and other performance coaches though
is how to deliver those drills in a different way. I’ve
already mentioned constraints-based coaching, where
you let the athlete make mistakes and then help them
reflect on what happened. Well, at club or school level,
that can still happen.
I understand that time limits at that level mean
there’s a temptation to offer quick, direct answers
to a technical problem, but you can build in some
time for them to reflect, to learn for themselves,
before asking an open question that allow