The Simple Mathematics of Sports Coaching
Sports coaching has always had a dilemma. Is its aim to achieve Stakhanovite efficiency and maximise chance of victory through the elimination of error? Winning ugly. Or is it about creativity and enterprise? The latter brings with it risk, and inevitable error, and sometimes these lead to defeat. Winning beautifully? But risking losing carelessly.
The truth is that efficiency and adventure are inextricably related. High performance is a product of both, but to differing degrees. Perhaps the formula might be:
Performance = Efficiency x Adventure
The significance is in the relationship. These commodities do not add together. They multiply. This means three things. Firstly, there is the capacity to favour one above the other. Secondly, the really high performances come from high levels of both. But finally, if the level of either dimension is nil, then the product is also nil.
Efficiency is always desirable. It is never good to drop passes or miss shots at goal. But adventure is situationally relevant. In some weather conditions, or at some score lines, it can be prudent to amend ambition, if only temporarily. Well judged risk taking in sport involves an appreciation of when to take chances. There is a difference between this and playing with indiscriminate abandon, which rarely improves performance consistently. It gives adventure a bad name and is cited as justification for the risk averse.
Schools can choose to create an environment that focuses on efficiency. Alternatively, they can encourage children to experiment with creativity in an environment where failure is not an irrecoverable disaster. Learning to balance risk, take chances and deal with disappointment are also potential outcomes from sport in schools. But none is inevitable. The environments which schools create are a reflection of their values.
So perhaps the final formula is:
Performance = Efficiency x Adventure
Situational Variables
What are the implications of this for coaching in schools? Approaches to error, to adventure, to the importance of winning and development are all too significant to be left to the whim of individual coaches. It would be a very confusing learning environment if a pupil had a range of these experiences. In the first term, it is fine to take risks and make errors trying to do the right thing. One term later a change of sport and coach could bring a joyless, mistake free focus on industrial efficiency.
It starts with a school wide philosophy which guides the delivery of all coaching, in all sports, sexes and ability levels. Rare are the schools that clearly communicate a consistent approach to this. The role of a teacher in charge of a sport is then to apply the school’s approach to each activity. The technical side will be specific to each sport, and in the gift of the person in charge; the philosophy of risk and adventure is not. It is a school wide policy, widely known and understood by all.
Sports cannot operate in their own self contained silos. A teacher in charge of a sport cannot have complete autonomy in any environment which aspires to quality control. No other subject is allowed to operate in self-determined isolation.
Good coaching finds an effective balance between efficiency and adventure; the best coaching achieves high levels of both. The mathematics of multiplication ensures that these performances are far, far higher.