This week’s education session was lead by Sarah Cahill, the Assistant Director of Strength and Conditioning. The focus of the session was on what makes a good coach and what strategies they adopt. Communication, listening, passion, motivator, leadership, and being knowledgeable are all great qualities for a coach to have, but it’s not about having those qualities, it’s what we can do with the qualities. In the realm of athletics no one wants to be average, everyone wants to be above the bar, this includes coaching. The best way to learn to coach is to coach and to learn from your own mistakes and successes over time. Everyone always has their own method of coaching, watching those are the most experienced in their skills is what I have found to be the greatest learning technique. I have found this to be my best way to develop my techniques because this has allowed me to view others methods and create what I believe to be the most effective coaching cues.
One of the subtopics covered was about coaching strategies, where it was discussed to create a resourceful plan for the coaches, where every coach has a designated duty during a lift. A point that was brought up that I thought was important for all coaches to understand is, think about where you are standing in a room. A coach does not want to have tunnel vision, they want to position themselves in a place where they are able to asses not just one single athlete. This I believe will comfort an athlete if they know a coach is not right there, but they are still being watched regardless. I feel I have become more aware of my surroundings and I am implementing this better in my own coaching style.
Another important feature of coaching strategies we discussed, which I usually feel the opposite way, refers to the analysis of the movement, where you as the coach should take your time interpreting the movement. I have felt that coaches are always quick to let athletes know what is going on, but because I am still becoming more familiar with the movements, I take my time and want to see several reps of the movement before I state a coaching cue. For me, over time I want to understand these movements as second nature, but I will not rush to analyze the movement pattern in the future. Once you know the movement pattern is wrong, a coach must determine the most appropriate method to intervene to correct the movement. The next step is figuring out the type of cues the athletes that you’re working with will positively respond to. Some will respond with a coaching manipulation to the athletes body to correct the position, a few athletes can just hear a cue and make the correction, some can see it, some can be asked where they feel it, some understand it better by relating it to their sport, or a coach can use corrective exercises. A coach need to figure out the appropriate cue for that individual athlete.
One of the biggest strategies for improvement that a coach must learn is to know when to just let learning happen. But at the opposite spectrum of things there are some days an athlete just can’t learn, which I actually experienced days after discussing this topic. Once I realized I was in this situation, I took the approach of just having a conversation with the athlete, where I then was able to see a slight mood improvement. From then on I was able to make small coaching cues that improved the movement of their exercises. That was all I could ask for in that situation.