PROCESS of COACHING and DEVELOPING A COACHING PHILOSOPHY

PROCESS of COACHING

•  Data collection

       Gather information fo decision making planning, provide feedback and to   

       monitor progress.

•  Diagnosis

        To check weaknesses and find remedies to improve training program.

• Prescribed plan of action

       Draw up plan an effective training program to achieve specific targets.

• Implementation

       Execute prescribed program.

• Evaluation

       Evaluate athlete’s development, achievement and program 

       implementation.

  DEVELOPING A COACHING PHILOSOPHY

• In developing a formal philosophy the coach can consider three key components to his or her best ability. These three components are :

• Knowing yourself, your strengths, weakness and areas requiring improvement.

• Knowing what you are up against and the obstacles you may encounter.

• Understanding your athletes, their personalities, abilities, goals, and why they are in your sport.

• A coaching philosophy can help one to be a better coach. To improve coach/hlete’s satisfaction and achieve batter results.

Know Yourself

It takes honest assessment to admit to having weaknesses but we all have them. We just do not want them to interfere with good coaching judgment. By focusing on your strengths you will be able to identify consistent ways to coach that utilize those strengths. Are you a good teacher, or motivator, or academic, or communicator or a former athlete? Are you dynamic, or easy going, or hardnosed or open and friendly? Use your strengths to your advantage. By taking time to make a serious assessment of your strengths and weaknesses and recognizing your morals, values and beliefs you are better able to adapt your own style to the athletes being coached. In addition, you will answer the important questions on why you are a coach, how you actually deliver as a coach and what objectives you are trying to accomplish. Self-knowledge leads to self-confidence and you want to exude what you believe in. One other point to consider here is – how do others perceive you?

Know what you are up against – your coaching context

As important as it is to understand what makes you tick, it is equally important to understand the confines of your coaching context. By this, I mean: A good understanding of the age, gender and training level of the athletes you coach. How much time you and your athletes have available to train and compete? What is your development program based upon and how far can you take it by enhancing and incorporating other aspects such as sport psychology, nutrition education or sophisticated technique analysis? What funding, facilities, services and equipment are at your disposal? In addition, what are your short medium and long term goals for your athletes? There could be other restrictions that will affect your coaching delivery. These include laws or policies of save practices, club or school rules of behavior, competition with other sports, school pressures and outside activities, parental interference, or performance standards to qualify for teams and competitions. Knowing what you are up against enables you to tailor your annual training program to be specific needs of the athletes you have under your charge. By understanding the outside influences that will affect your program, you can incorporate those that are good practice. Such as policies on safety and behavior, adapt to others that restrict your ability to be the ‘do it all coach’ such as lack of funds, equipment or services, and minimize negative obstacles that will affect you personally or an athlete on your team or your team in general. Dealing with parents can be a stressful situation and a clear philosophy on how you will deal with an irate parent will minimize or avoid the knee jerk reaction that often makes matters worse. By adapting your coaching philosophy to reflect the coaching situation you are dealing with you become more effective and productive and you minimize obstacles and other difficulties.

Understand your athletes, their personalities, abilities, goal and why they are in your sport

Communication is a vital aspect in coach/athlete relationships. It is very important to talk to your athletes individually to determine what their values and beliefs are, what their goals are and why they are participating. Without this knowledge, you might be delivering a coaching bag of buah durian to athletes wanting a bag of buah rambutan. The program just will not work properly. As a coach, you are a powerful role model and can have a tremendous influence on your athlete if you and your athletes are on the same page. Take the time to get to know each of your athletes just as if you examined your own values, beliefs and habits. Once you know and understand each of your athletes, their strengths, weaknesses abilities and skills, then I suggest you develop an approach to coaching them. Will you focus on the stars? Will you treat everyone equal in terms of your attention and help? Perhaps the teamwork approach will work for you. A coach’s belief and experience  will ultimately assist the coach to form his opinion and his experience in respect to the National Sports Policy. A coaches philosophy is what the coach believes, how he forms his opinions and what he expects. Therefore his philosophy is shown in his actions, behavior, speech and lifestyles in sports, in short.