BOOK REVIEW: The Double Goal Coach
Positive Coaching Tools for Honoring the Game and Developing Winners in Sports and Life
by Jim Thompson
What is the overall purpose of sport? What is the impact it can have on people’s lives and what can you do to ‘develop winners in sports and life’. ‘The Double Goal Coach’ is a look at the theories of the Positive Coaching Alliance and the methods they use to encourage coaches to have a positive impact on the lives of those that they coach. Essentially, the focus of the ‘Double Goal’ is to place personal development alongside sporting development as the focus for your sporting programme. In doing so, redefining the primary function of many sporting programmes.
Thompson will ask to question the reason why you are coaching young people in the first place and whether your primary focus should be them excelling in their chosen sport given the statistical likelihood of them making a career of it. He will also question the win at all costs model of coaching that permeates across the spectrum of sport in the Western world. Of particular interest are the principles of redefined the concept of winning in emphasising effort, rewarding mistakes that occur with effort and setting effort, rather than outcome goals. This he refers to as being the ‘Mastery Approach’. For many of those acquainted with the work of Carol Dweck and the ‘Growth Mindset’ concept this will not be new, what the book succeeds at is offering many practical suggestions to show you to build the principles into your teaching/coaching practice. Thompson is at pains to state that he is not anti competitive and indeed he sees the processes of a positive coach will lead to more winning for a team. He states that for any coach, the superior approach is that of ‘mastery’ and the building of an environment that encourages positivity rather than the avoidance of error.
He will also ask you to consider what your athletes will take from your sessions and what they will remember in the long term. Thompson strongly argues that it will not be the minutiae of technique, but rather it will be how you made them feel. It is for this reason he writes about the concept of ‘Filling the Emotional Tank’ making athletes feel good about themselves through your interactions with them, as well as encouraging positive interactions throughout the team.
The third aspect of the positive coach, is one who encourages their players to ‘honour the game’ both with their conduct and their attitude towards the game. This involves demonstrating respect for rules, opponents, officials, teammates and one’s self. He strongly makes the point that playing the game to the letter of the laws is not sufficient. Rather, it is important to play the game within the framework within which the laws were intended.
‘The Double Goal Coach’ will serve as a thoroughly interesting read that will call into question many of the unwritten laws of sports coaching. It will also serve as justification for the importance of sport in the school curriculum, in a world where it is increasingly under pressure from the results driven academic climate.
Jamie Taylor is Head of Rugby at Denstone College