Martin Bingisser

GAINcast Episode 253: Journaling (with Paul Kilgannon)

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The lost art of journaling is a great practice for any sportsperson, of any age. Coach and consultant Paul Kilgannon draws on his teaching background to help athletes develop good journaling habits to improve their performance. On this week’s podcast he shares some tips to journal better, as well as his CARVER coaching framework.

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Notes and quotes

Paul Kilgannon is a coach, consultant, mentor, author and creator of the CARVER Coaching Framework which is used across a number of sports and industries.

  • 0:00 – Introduction.
  • 3:15 – Kilgannon’s coaching journey: “Coaching is about how you can create an effective environment where people want to be there, and feel comfortable to apply themselves at a high level.”
  • 6:00 – Book projects and how they came about.
  • 8:45 – Journaling.
  • 10:00 – Vern on journaling.
  • 11:30 – Getting athletes to learn and become coaches: “We can’t learn or perform for our athletes. The byproduct of good coaching creates autonomous and intrinsically motivated athletes. Therefore we need to equip them with tools and skills to harness their own ability.”
  • 12:30 – Getting back to the basics: “The primary colors are red yellow and blue. If we can get those colors we can make any color. What are those colors in sport? When we see a breakdown in performance it is often just a deviation from those fundamentals.”
  • 14:15 – How to teach the journaling process and where to start: “What would you like a blind man to see in your performance. Understand that and then build practice and behaviors that can drive that.”
  • 18:00 – About hurling, Gaelic sports, and Irish sporting culture.
  • 23:15 – Meeting his wife at GAIN.
  • 24:45 – The Carver framework: “Coaching is not about the small things, it is about the big things. It is a craft.”
  • 28:45 – Taking it beyond sport.
  • 30:45 – Singing the praises of coaching: “We are sitting on the solution to many of society’s ills: physical activity and a sense of community. Sport might be the vehicle, but the coach is the driver.”
  • 34:30 – Physical education and youth sports in Ireland.
  • 39:00 – EU, sport, and elevating the status of the coach.
  • 43:00 – Identifying and cultivating future coaches: “Retention is the only key metric for developmental sport. When we rush to performance we shoot the learner and become very insular.”

To hear more about these topics you can listen to the full episode above. If you like what you hear on the GAINcast, don’t forget to give us a review and subscribe on iTunes.

Further reading

The following links were referenced in the podcast or provide some additional reading material on the topic: