Posts

Craig Pickering

Optimism in coaching: helpful or harmful?

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Are you a better than average driver? In an interesting study from the early 80s, researchers asked a small group of American and Swedish study participants this very question. Their answers were illuminating; 93% of Americans believed they were better than average drivers, as did 69% of Swedes. Logically, this makes no sense; only 50% of people can be better than average drivers, and yet, these study results suggest that many people are unable to accurately understand their true driving ability relative to others. Read more

Martin Bingisser

September 2019 in review: reflective coaching

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Reflective practice is a way of studying your own experiences to improve the way you work. Reflective coaching is doing the same to become a better coach. This month we are explored ways coaches can learn from their successes and failures to take a step forward. Below are all of our new resources on the topic, including several new articles, podcasts, and videos. Read more

Martin Bingisser

Feedback should be reflective, not reflexive

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The best feedback for coaches often comes from the people doing the training themselves: the athletes. Nobody knows better how training went than the people who did it. Being able to identify and articulate that feedback is a skill that must be honed and developed like anything else. Read more

Martin Bingisser

The value of unstructured conversation and talking shop

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One of the little-known benefits of the HMMR Plus membership is the ability to hang out and talk shop with many of our contributors. Today we recorded our 18th member hangout focusing on September site theme of reflective coaching. Read more

James Marshall

Finding the right feedback for reflective coaching

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Finding the right time for reflective coaching is critical, as I wrote about last week. But reflecting will not bring your coaching forward if you do not have the right information. In order to properly reflect, you need to search out the best information. Read more

Martin Bingisser

GAINcast Episode 170: Physical competence (with Darren Ritchie)

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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

James Marshall

Reflective practice for coaches

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Plan, do, and review. That’s the basic outline of the coaching process. Most coaches love the doing part, some are good at planning, but what about the review? In my experience this is the poor, neglected child of coaching; an afterthought that might be brought up once a year in a formal evaluation setting. It is a bit like a cool down in the training environment, everyone knows it is important, but most are too busy or too tired to do it properly. Read more

Martin Bingisser

HMMR Podcast Episode 205: The 2019 debrief

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After every season, Nick and I informally look back on how training has gone, what went went well, and what didn’t. In this year’s debrief we look at changes to our warm ups, integrating specific strength, better implementing the Bondarchuk system, lessons on remote coaching, and more. Read more

Mike Bahn

5 keys to a successful debrief

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A key component of a successful high performance program is the ability to identify obstacles that are limiting performance and then implementing solutions to overcome (or avoid) those obstacles. Regardless if you are an operator (an athlete or coach for example), director or in management, all are searching for processes to improve performance in an ethical and measurable manner. When such obstacles are clear and the resulting payoff of overcoming those obstacles in substantial, targeting such “low hanging fruit” should be an immediate goal. Read more

Craig Pickering

Quantifying the placebo effect in sports performance

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Last month, I wrote about how the coach may act as a placebo, potentially exerting performance enhancing effects through a variety of means. The research discussed in that article was just s small part of recent efforts to better understand the influence of placebo effects on sporting performance. An upcoming special issue of European Journal of Sports Science aims to dig even more into the area, including another paper on the potential to further enhance our understanding of how placebo can affect performance. Read more