thats it folks part 2

So there you go! The end is near! 


As the season draws to a close, my mind starts to wonder back to what has worked well and what has maybe not gone so well. It is so important to reflect on your seasonal goals and the tools that you have used throughout.

Its reflection time and its an important part of the season, its a way to gauge opinions and successes and also and more importantly failures, as we know that failure is the best way to open up potential learning opportunities.

So todays post is going to cover two things:

1, The tools we have use

2, The coach education process and how being online has changed the way coaches develop.

I have used a number of tools and these came from a variety of places, I have met some inspirational characters along the way.

The Rugby Club I was working at we used a feedback / behaviours approach that was a hybrid model, but this approach was many inspired by "Any given team" By Ray McLean.
If you have not read this book then I encourage you to do so, its all about Feedback and Leadership. One of the most eye opening books I have ever read. We agreed behaviours and lived by them. 

I haven't always been a games based coach, during my teacher training I was very focussed on drills and what skill development looked like. I appreciated the values that sport can develop, but my upmost focus when teaching and coaching was skills development and in my opinion skills could only be developed through vast repetition through a drill.

My first Teacher Training placement was an inner london school, with a Professional Football Academy attached to it. My first invasion games unit was Football! I spent 4 weeks trying to desperately balance the interest of the pupils with engaging them with my endless supply of drills. I sat in the PE office with my head in my hands. This was so challenging, every session the pupils asked when they would be playing games, that is all they wanted - so that was it, I started to design games that stretched the players and I never had that worry again. Therefore my love for games based coaching was born.

Fast forward to the present day and I now use Games with Constraints to develop players and use the fav tool of all which is the nightclub clickers to track the progress and set targets. We used headbands to encourage "heads up rugby" and scanning, these tools came about because of an amazing group of people who are part of the Magic Academy - Sharing practice and joint working has never been so good! Russell Earnshaw (as head Wizard) has created something that opened up the world of coaching and coaching practices, plus created a platform for creativity to be practiced and developed. The most important CPD (In my opinion) is a conversation with another professional.

From a practice point of view I have spoken in detail on this blog about the importance of experience and how that drives learning. When I heard Mark Bennett MBE talk about his rule of three and UAE I was sold, I know that is just the surface of PDS and I look forward to finding out more in the future. https://www.pdscoaching.com/what-is-pds-pds-coach-mark-bennett- I hope to work with Mark in the future as his system sits close to my own personal philosophy.

That brings me onto Coach Education, I have learnt so much this year as a coach and this has come from a number of different sources. So to start with:

People, I've met some amazing people and conversation is hands down the best educational tool you can have, open honest and thought provoking conversation with similar views. If you read my recent blog about "Teaching in Chaos" http://www.therugbycoachesblog.co.uk/2018/02/lets-get-chaotic-introducing-hexagon.html This led to a conversation with Craig Gunn (Coach Gunny) and before I knew it we was bouncing ideas off each other. Thank you Gunny.

Podcasts and Blogs, there are so many podcasts and they all have awesome cheat codes "The Talent Equation" has given me some great insights and light bulb moments. http://www.thetalentequation.co.uk/
Particularly recently with the conversation with Amy Price on Video Games Coaching, an outstanding conversation with plenty of light bulb moments.

Some other podcasts that I regularly listen to on my 2 hour commute to work:
The Coaching Code http://coachreed.com/podcast/coachingcode/the_c0ach1ng_c0de-ep17-revolutionary-rule-3/
Thank you Coach Reed for this!

The first Podcast I ever listened to was:
The Rugby Coaches Corner and this was the original eye opener for me:
http://therugbycoachscorner.com/index.html 
Thank you to Andy Plimer for introducing me to so many different concepts.

My Mumblings on CPD, I have recently attended a number of CPD courses, I found myself sitting in the sessions pondering coach education. Surely a CPD coaching programme with the focus on the coaching skills and understanding of learning would be beneficial. In my experience beginners coaches are always after "Games and Drills" to help them improve their players. But most importantly, not over science'in the beginning coaches, as this often makes them try to hold onto tangible things that they believe taught them to perform. Experience will dictate coaching behaviour, if the coach perceives it to have been successful to them personally they will (Generally) return to what they know.

So answer me this question......did you bechieve you goal?