End of year reflection:

During the past academic year, I have had to coach not only as an individual but also as part of a group both of which allow the fruition of various skills and traits essential to good coaching.

Throughout the academic year, I feel I have learned to adapt my weaknesses to my advantage whilst I feel I have eradicated a few weaknesses, through my gained knowledge and confidence gained from attending the vast majority of practices; this was achieved by coaching a diverse selection of activities from football to lacrosse. I feel my experiences in America during the summer gave me a massive boost in confidence, ingenuity and creativity yet, these skills where further enhanced during the practical sessions mainly due to new coaching styles and methods learned.

Improved Strengths and new strengths:

 I feel I have gained the confidence to coach any session in any sport as I’ve learned that even if you are inexperienced in a certain sport you can coach to a good level as you have no pre-conceived notions of the sport so this has provided me great confidence. Whilst I have also learned about various interventions and how to maximise the equipment and space no matter how small, limited or basic it may seem; you have to utilise the equipment and environment given to you. I have also learned how to adapt activities for participants with disabilities and coached a passing session for participants who were disabled with lost limbs.

Through the academic year, I have learned lots of things from, learning and coaching styles, intervention techniques, new games and activities and lots of personal traits and characteristics, and have certainly improved as a coach.

 Weaknesses:

At the start of the academic year I thought I was quite a good coach but over the duration of the year I have learned so much including, that my coaching philosophies where quite one dimensional and was only really comfortable coaching my favoured sport football.

My weaknesses, from the start of the academic year.

•I can often become over exuberant and become over talkative.

•I often allow judgements and perceptions to cloud my judgement of character and situations.

•Whilst I feel I could become more organised by planning in advance.

•I find it hard to accept criticism and negative feedback.

 

Evaluation of my weaknesses:

Throughout the year, I feel as though I have improved my weaknesses through attending the vast majority of practical sessions.

I feel that my first weakness I claimed at the beginning of the academic year that,

•I can often become over exuberant and become over talkative.

Is not really a weakness I have learned that my exuberance can be motivating especially for younger participants and that it is actually a strength of my coaching as my passion and enjoyment is evident and thus rubs off on the participants, whilst I have realised being too talkative is also a strength as I have the opportunity to communicate and learn more about my participants and ask their opinions and how they are finding the sessions which I also feels motivates the participants further.

My second weakness I mentioned at the beginning of the academic year:

•I often allow judgements and perceptions to cloud my judgement of character and situations.

I feel that I am becoming more understanding and tolerant of people and thus my opinions and judgements are less prevalent, yet they still do exist and is something I still need to focus on in the future.

The next weakness I highlighted at the beginning of the academic year was:

• I could become more organised by planning in advance.

 I feel I have improved this weakness as I was permitted to plan sessions every night in America for the next day’s activities, and also prior to practical sessions during the course. Yet feel this is a major weakness as I tend to feel that planning provides too much structure and can inhibit coaching due to time constrains placed on activities, so I feel I need to find a way to plan that is not too formal.

The last weakness I mentioned was that:

•I find it hard to accept criticism and negative feedback.

This is still something that’s an on-going process, as I still find it hard to accept and need to be told more positives than negatives, yet it keeps me motivated to improve as a coach and subsequently reduce criticism.

Yet overall I feel, it’s been a very constructive year, in which I have developed as a coach and as a person; through improved knowledge, experiences and opportunities, yet realise I still need to strive to improve.

TGFU Insight audio

 

Teaching Games for Understanding (TGFU)

Audio insight into TGFU, available via the link below:

 

 

https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/13e2f1304bee0fc3

(Bunker & Thorpe, 1986a)

Thorpe, R., Bunker, D.(Eds.). (1986). Rethinking games teaching.

Loughborough: University of Technology, Loughborough.

Griffin et al., (1997)

 Griffin, L. L., Mitchell, S. A., & Oslin, J. L. (1997). Teaching sport concepts and skills: A tactical games approach. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. pg.1

Blocked, Varied & Random Practise:

Blocked, Varied & Random Practise:

 

During one of the practical sessions, we were instructed in groups of two’s, to coach a 10/15 minute session that followed the following protocol:

Starting off with:

Blocked practise

Then on to:

Varied practise

Before finally onto:

Random practise

For the session I was doing basketball shooting and started off with the participant simply shooting at the basket from behind the cone, as blocked practise is as stated by Galligan, F. et al. (2000), ` Blocked practise involves the participants in repeated rehearsals of the same task` which can be tedious but I believe can help novice athletes gain an insight into the skills and techniques needed in order to perform the task, whilst the repetitive element will help the information soak into the brain.

I then moved onto varied practise w Blocked practise involves the participants in repeated rehearsals of the same task here the participant was able to shoot from four separate  cones in different positions alternatively in order to make the shots more varied and progress the session, one of the participants was struggling to make the shot, and when they did not very accurately so I got the participants going and I pulled the participant who was struggling out and provided a demonstration and provided some advice regarding aiming for the black square on the back-board. Varied practise seemed much more enjoyable for the participants as they had more movement and challenges to concentrate on.

I then moved onto random practise where, the participants used the techniques they had been learning in a small sided 3 on two games in favour of the attackers to ensure more emphasis was on shooting then we swapped over so the other team received the same opportunity. Random practice may broaden the learning workspace, there-by allowing more opportunity for players to engage in discovery learning to find different solutions to each movement problem presented (Handford et al., 1997). This seemed very enjoyable for the participants as it allowed the participants to make their own decisions and be creative, yet it was made easier as it followed the other two styles as they had already learned the skills and techniques and thus these where transferred to the final drill.

Research findings typically show that, in simple motor tasks, acquisition performance is enhanced with repetitive, blocked task practice (low contextual interference), while retention and transfer benefit from random practice scheduling (high contextual interference; Shea & Morgan, 1979).

References:

Gallagan, F. et al. (2000) Acquiring Skill In: GALLIGAN, F. et al., Advanced PE for Edexcel. 1st ed. Bath: Bath Press, p. 102-108

Handford, C., Davids, K., Bennett, S., & Button, C. (1997). Skill acquisition in sport: Some applications of an evolving practice ecology. Journal of Sports Sciences, 15, 621 – 640.

Shea & Morgan, 1979), Contextual interference effects on the acquisition, retention, and transfer of a motor skill, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory Pg. 5, 179-187.

Whole Part Whole:

Whole Part Whole:

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Whole-Part-Whole: `The coach presents the whole practice, then the practise is broken down into its Foundations of Sports Coaching component parts, then the whole is practised again`.

Robinson (2010)

Whole part whole was a fairly new concept to myself at the beginning of the academic year, in which I tended to coach the traditional way consisting of:

• Warm-up
• Starter activity
• Main activity
• Match
• Cool down

I realise although the traditional way can be effective, I now accept it’s a very one dimensional approach that has been pre-determined for the participants prior to session and does not cater for the group or individuals within the group. So now I tend to use the whole, part, whole coaching concept (shown in the above diagram) as it allows me to learn significant information about the group such as skill, personality, experience and area’s to improve for the individuals and the group.

 This is because you throw the participants straight into the deep end and see them in action and can extract a vast amount of information; which allows the coach to determine what needs working on and how split the session up into sections which can be placed into the whole (game) at the end, where you will usually see more competent performers with the attributes learned. This method allows you to visually see if the coaching has been effective.

 Paul. E. Robinson (2010) Foundations of Sports Coaching P.69

Improved coaching pedagogy:

 

   My coaching pedagogy has certainly evolved over the last year, as I have learned to critique others coaching performance , finding faults and failures, whilst understanding what I would change, why I would change it and how; this could be in terms of coaching styles, methods or interventions and progressions.

      A predominant situation where this became evident was during the martial arts session, when the instructors where taking the session they asked myself and my peers, when should you stop a session after false practise to which I stated, “ straight away” yet I was informed I was wrong much to my dismay; as I felt that I was right, the instructors stated that the participants should be left alone even after false practise in order to self-discover the correct protocol; yet although this can sometimes work as the procedure can often allow the skill to be prevalent long term , I believe in this scenario due to the potential danger of the sport that they should be corrected immediately in order to prevent injury to the participant and their fellow peers.

Whilst I believe that eradicating false movements immediately will prevent false practise and thus allow safe effective practise. It’s harder to eradicate false practise due to pre-conceived movements and thoughts, than correcting incorrect movements immediately and thus progress.  It’s easier to work with a blank canvas than a tainted one.

This provided me with a feeling of accomplishment as no longer was I reliant on other people’s opinions, I had my own philosophies about coaching and felt I could critic experienced coaches and have confidence and knowledge/understanding to back up my opinion.