SPORTS COACHING DEVELOPMENTS - Essay Example

Sports Coaching Developments Sports Coaching Developments “Practice makes perfect” (Kidman and Hanrahan, 2001). A sports coach simply defined is an individual who instructs athletes in a particular sport on how best to attain their objectives based on their specialised technical and strategic knowledge in a particular athletic sport. Sports development, sustainance and increased participation depends a lot on sports coaches; they are a fundamental ingredient in sporting activity thanks to the guidance that they give to individuals with interest in sports to follow their dreams, achieve their potential and have fun.

This paper will analyse the role that variables such as personal experience, tradition and science play in relation to effective coaching: in the context of coach practice structure and coach behaviour. Finally, it will conclude by outlining the essentials of coach behaviour and a coach practice structure. It takes much more than sports mastery to be a coach; individual perception, which depends on personal elements such as values, attitudes, interests, plays a vital role in coaching. A good coach must be a good communicator.

The sports instruction relies on the ability to communicate to each player in a team, taking into consideration the player’s personal attributes, and in a simple and concise way to employ sport techniques and tact in preparation for competition (Wrisberg, 2007). Additionally, for coaching to be effective, there has to be mutual trust and respect between the athletes and the coach. It is important for the coach to formulate and maintain an effective working relationship with the players. Further, a coach’s philosophy, which depends a lot on their personal values and culture, has a lot of bearing in the sense that coaches influence the quality of an athlete’s experience with a sport and in this way can motivate or demoralize an athlete in pursuing their dreams.

The right philosophy for a coach should not be to always win but should focus instead on being a teacher and mentor to athletes with the aim of developing highly motivated, proud and inspired individual, regardless of whether they win gold medals or not (Kidman and Hanrahan, 2001).Science is the knowledge resulting from theory investigation and application. The world today has remarkable features as a result of science, computers, the Internet and so much more. The role that science has played in making life today simpler, fun and comfortable is undisputedly immeasurable.

We owe a lot to our ancestral and current scientists; it would be foolhardy for coaches to refuse to accept science’s ‘helping hand’ in leading their protégées to success. Application of science in coaching is the process of studying an athlete’s physical and psychological attributes and then coming up with coaching instructions that best suit an athlete in that sense, coaching instructions that an athlete can easily and best adapt to (Kidman and Hanrahan, 2001). Coaching is about communicating to an individual how best to achieve their objectives.

If there is a simpler, most effective way of doing so, then it should be employed. Employment of science in today’s sport has resulted in moulding good into great and, consequently, great into gold medal champions! In light of the discussions above on acceptable coach behaviour in the context of philosophy and application of other factors such as science in coaching, the paper will now conclude by outlining the essentials of a coaching structure. An effective coaching structure in formulating learning methods should focus on an athlete’s physical and personal characteristics together with the athlete’s mental capability to perform tasks in relation to the type of information that the athlete is supposed to detect and interpret in the course of performing tasks; the choices the athletes must make and the demands associated with making them; and, the ability of the athlete to execute technique, tact and mental skills associated with the sport processes.

This way, the coach is able to get feedback on the effectiveness of the learning methods they are implementing by asking themselves questions based on the athlete’s process execution.BibliographyKidman, L., and Hanrahan, J. S., 2011. The Coaching Process: A practical guide to becoming an effective sports coach. New Jersey: Taylor & Francis Group.Wrisberg, A. C., 2007. Sports Skill Instructions for Coaches. New York: Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data.