Tag Archive for: Coaches Education

GAINcast Episode 267: From east to west (with Bogdan Poprawski)

The 1980s were a time of global awakening in track and field. As coaches experimented with new training methods, ideas started spreading all over the blog. Coach Bogdan Poprawski was at the center of that process, moving as a young coach from Poland to Canada and helping Gerard Mach set up a new system. On this week’s GAINcast he joins us to share some stories about becoming a coach in a different era and culture, the transition to Canada, and much more.

Read more

GAINcast Episode 214: The good coach

We all talk about good coaching and see to know it when we see it, but often we are lost for words when asked to describe it. On this week’s GAINcast we dive into coaching excellence by defining it, sharing examples from our own experiences, exploring how coaches get better, and looking at how different components contribute to success.

Read more

How elite coaches learn

Behind every successful athlete is a coach. Whilst we typically have a good idea of what goes into developing an elite athlete, we tend to pay much less attention to how elite coaches develop. This is obviously a gap in our thinking; if we want to have successful athletes, and to sustain the success of those athletes, then we need an army of coaches with the ability to develop and support them. As a coach reading this, you might be thinking about how you can best develop, and what situations can you engineer for yourself to best drive your development. Fortunately, there is plenty of research to guide us.

Read more

Seeking, accumulating, and connecting knowledge in coaching

Coaching is a dynamic, complex, and often chaotic process. Coaches often get caught in the continuous cycle of planning, delivering, and reviewing. At times it is essential for the coach to step back and hit pause to question this process. One question that the coach might have after a succession of those cycles is: “How do we getter better as a team?” This question might evolve into “How do I get better as a coach?” or “How do I get better as a person”? As we will explore in this article, the learning process of a coach is not only based on acquiring new knowledge and habits but also changing them.

Read more

GAINcast Episode 170: Physical competence (with Darren Ritchie)

Many coaches lament the decline of physical education and physical literacy. Rather than just complain about it, Darren Ritchie has been at the forefront of doing something about it. As head of coach development at Scottish Athletics, he sought to arm coaches with new tools to battle the problem. On this week’s GAINcast Ritchie joins us to discuss how he helped define and build physical competence in Scotland. Read more

GAINcast Episode 144: Pillars of coaching (with Frank Dick)

After a career of coaching Olympic champions, Frank Dick has turned his attention to coaching coaches. Coaching is the foundation of sport. Athletes make excellence happen, but it is the coaches that make excellence possible. On this episode of the GAINcast, Dick joins us to talk about the pillars of coaching and how we can create better coaches. Read more

GAINcast Episode 143: Coach Developer (with Troy Engle)

Coaching has evolved, and so has how we develop coaches. As director of coach development at Sport Singapore, Troy Engle has tried to set up a new approach to developing both coaches and the coaching culture in the city-state. He joins us on this week’s GAINcast to talk about his project, his philosophy of developing coaches, and the challenges of coaching across cultures. Read more

GAINcast Episode 120: Fifty years on

Fifty years ago this week, Vern finished his last college exam and the world was changing all around him. It was the summer of 1968. On this episode we take a look back at the country in 1968, learning to become a coach, and take a stab and predicting what the next 50 years have in store for sport. Read more

HMMR Podcast Episode 143: More questions, more answers

Our mailbag is full again and on this week’s episode we take time to answer listener questions on a variety of topics. Tune in to hear our advice to our younger selves, thoughts on sequencing training, coaches education, training the weight throw, the placebo effect, and more. Read more

GAINcast Episode 105: Developing coaches (with Kelvin Giles)

It’s easy to complain about the state of sport, coaching, and physical education, but what are you doing about it? Kelvin Giles has dedicated his life to it after a career working at the upper echelons of professional sport. On this episode of the GAINcast, Giles joins us to share his experiences with structural problems in coaching and coaches education. More importantly, he discusses how we can address these issues both as individuals and s both individuals, and as a community. Read more