What is a good coach?
It’s a question that has begun popping up more and more as the climbing coaching space expands and coaches with international experience begin to spread thin.
Historically we have looked to ex-athletes to fill many of these roles, but as sport and society progress we are seeing more and more that ex-athletes don’t always (but definitely can) make the best coaches. There are also some ideas developing that ‘experience’ is not always a good indicator of performance - (Does Experience Determine Performance? A Meta-Analysis on the Experience-Performance Relationship, January 2009, W O Peake and M I Marshall, also interesting article from the Harvard business review - https://hbr.org/2019/09/experience-doesnt-predict-a-new-hires-success)
There is some evidence to suggest that ‘time in the field’ results in faster recognition of specific patterns (found in firefighters) and could result in identification of sport specific details (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-we-rely-on-our-intuition/ , also the book thinking fast and slow discusses this a lot) but these things can also result in unconscious biases being reinforced and repeated, even if they don’t serve the coach or the athlete.
One of the things that most sports professionals do agree on is that one size doesn’t fit all, so if you’re seeing the same issues in everyone, or someone always prescribes the same training…… maybe it’s time to stop and think again.
The other challenge with ‘experience’ being our primary variable in identifying talent is that how we used to do things may not be how things are done now. One major part of this (not wanting to get TOO deep here) is past trauma. There is no doubt that historical training methods, particularly in high performance, were centred around suffering and sacrifice. Good coaches were conflated with mean and narcissistic personalities. The harder you were, the tougher you were, the more resilient and higher achieving your athlete was likely to be. If you’re reading this and finding it hard to imagine a good coach being a ‘soft’ personality, it’s no surprise. It’s an idea that’s reinforced in every movie, in our media and all of our discourse around high performance. From CEO’s to olympians. But if you dig a little deeper, reflect on your own experiences, it’s likely you’ll recognise that your best work was not when you were suffering. (A fantastic article outlining some interesting research here - https://balanceisbetter.org.nz/key-characteristics-of-the-worlds-best-coaches/)
We have become so used to the idea of the ‘grind’ we’ve never stopped to question how true this is. One of the biggest differences between elite athletes and amateurs is their willingness to do just a little more. Not when a coach was yelling at them, but every time, every session. This comes from a place of passion and joy, not misery and suffering. When we think of high performance we think of flow state. You don’t reach flow state when you’re grinding.
So what then? If experience is a trap, and it’s not about holding athletes to the preverbal grind stone. What is it then that a coach does?
My growing feeling is that a good coach, a really good coach is a guide. Ideally some sort of ‘spirit’ guide. I use the word ‘spirit’ here to mean a variety of things. Mental, physical, emotional, the brain body connection, is what I mean by spirit. A good coach is a good guide and to be a good guide you have to know the steps, understand the path. The reality here is then that we imagine this is the path of classical success, the path from competitor to champion, but really it is the path to self development. How do you find the better than yesterday, the consistent improvement, the recovery from failure. Because the hard truth is that not everyone is meant to be a champion in what they do. If they were than champions wouldn’t exist. But everyone can be better than yesterday, at least in some way. The beauty of this approach is that it can utilise experience as a starting point, a place to jump from. This was my experience, would this work now? Would this work for this person? Why or why not? Growth is about curiosity and curiosity is about asking questions, even on previously held ‘truths’, and then having faith that this answer will do until you find a better one, and even faith that you can find a better one in time.
For me, the best coaches are the ones who understand this, who spend time asking questions and exploring answers and who are even brave enough to question their own beliefs and experiences.
Mix this with a background in the sport, in the science, as an athlete, and you’d have something really magic.
Comments