Positive Behavior Management in Sport

Recently, I attended another Sports Coach UK course which was called Positive Behavior Management in Sport. I was interested in the course because over the years I have had to deal with disruptive and unwanted behavior as a coach. I wanted to know what I could do to prevent this and deal with the behavior as it has become an important aspect which I would like to improve on, this is because at the moment we have one or two athletes who misbehave. This is due to behavioral problems such as ADHD but one of the options of dealing with this was asking the athlete to leave the group. I firmly believe that this is not an option! I feel that if this happened I would be letting the athlete down as a coach and be going against everything I believe in, this is in terms of developing and improving the athlete as a performer and a person. 

The course was very insightful and made you think about your coaching environment. They explained that at times what you do as a coach can allow opportunities for unwanted behavior to arise. For example transitions between activities and activities that are too easy or challenging can lead to athletes losing their focus. Another interesting aspect was looking into why might a child misbehave, the course taught me about the social element. Children learn a lot from their parents and friends, this is a massive factor in what kind of things they say or do when they misbehave. The tutor explained that you have to take into consideration the area the athletes live in and this could perhaps influence what they say or do etc. These stereotypes are controversial and can present some useful information to coaches which should be appreciated however, it's important not to judge or hold against the child before you really get to know them. 

The way you talk to the athlete, who has demonstrated unwanted behavior, is crucial because if the coach shows negative language and body language the athlete may feel threatened and this can be classed as bullying; for example, looking down at them and shouting. If you challenge the behavior in a negative manner you could get a clash and a confrontation. This is not helpful for you as the coach, the athlete and the other athletes. Children copy behavior so it's important that you demonstrate positive behavior, this can be sitting them down rather standing or crouching, speaking calmly etc. 

To conclude, as a coach you can prevent unwanted behavior from arising by going in to more depth with planning. Planning the transitions and making sure that the session has progressions and regressions so that the athletes don't find the activities too hard or too easy. Finally, children copy behaviors they see and it is important to set a positive example for the children to follow. 

@dannymaynard92

Mentoring Other Sports Coaches

Just recently I attended a course which was all about how to mentor other sports coaches. I was really interested in seeing how I could help other coaches develop their coaching practice. I learnt that it's not really about sport specific content in some degree because that role is for the national governing bodies course tutors to provide sport specific knowledge. The role of the mentor is to develop the coach's coaching skills and principles. The tutor explained that a top skiing coach from Wales was a mentor for Beth Tweddle's coach, who if you didn't know Beth competes for GB in gymnastics. So that was interesting in itself with totally different sports which are delivered in different seasons and environments. This highlights that the coaching principles that you pick up on national governing body and university coaching courses are universal to some degree.

A theme that ran through the course was reflection, I think reflection is crucial in coaching because you can explore into what happened and why things happened. You can learn a lot about yourself and your coaching by dissecting what you coached and how you coached it. The tutor added, to get the best out of the mentee it is important that you don't spoon feed them, you allow them time and the opportunity to ask questions about their own practice. Other ways that the mentor can help the sports coach is observing their practice, the mentor would agree with the coach when the observation is going to take place. The mentor would arrange a meeting to provide feedback, the tutor explained that it is important how you feedback to the coach. He suggested the sandwich method, (praise, possible improvement, praise) all coaches use this when working with athletes but sometimes you don't give the method any thought when working with adults. 

I found the course really helpful and interesting because I want to help other coaches develop and share my passion for coaching. The other attendees were a bit curious why I was on the course, this was in terms of my age but they were impressed with my experience and my knowledge that I have gained over a 4 year period. This led to a discussion on mentors being younger than the mentee, how it's nothing to do with age but experience. Age can be an advantage in terms of life experience however, it comes down to coaching experiences and the ability to guide and allow the coach to use their intrinsic feedback to reflect on their sessions. Finally, the course looked into looking how the coach learns and this looked at the VARK method, The acronym VARK stands for Visual, Audio, Read/write, and Kinaesthetic. As a mentor the coach's learning style should be considered as this can have a massive impact on their ability to learn. 

In conclusion, the course was really intriguing and has given me some pointers and guidance on how I can be an effective mentor. I strongly recommend the course to people who are interested in mentoring other sports coaches. The course is well run and is great value, in some cases it's free for club mark accredited clubs. For more information look on the Sports Coach UK website. 

@dannymaynard92

Would appreciate your comments and views

Are Children Becoming Less Active?

In this post I will explore my sporting experiences as a child and compare them to what I see young children doing at present times in terms of sport. I will highlight current issues and current attitudes of children and parents. 

I have had excellent sporting experiences within my childhood, I used to regularly go to local astro turfs and play football with my dad. When it was the school holidays and I was sent to my grandma's house for a week, she would take me to play football and cricket at local fields and parks. Due to this I feel that I have been lucky in terms of positive experiences and exposure to sport but I feel that children nowadays will not be taken to parks by their parents or family members. On a sunny day many children would rather stay in and play games rather than going outside on a local park or field to play with friends.

Attitudes have changed over the last 10 years with children and parents being more cautious about playing outside due to potential threats and dangers such as abductions and traffic. When I was a child these were issues but not as serious as they are now, traffic on the roads is a bigger issue with more and more cars on the roads. I think that it should be compulsory for children to join sport clubs, as they can choose any sport they want, they can develop not just skills but also develop character and social awareness, another positive of joining sports clubs is the safety and security of the child there will always be an adult watching. Children are playing out less and less so it would make sense to get them into safe fun organised clubs or activities regularly. 

In my opinion, I think families need to play a bigger part in developing their child's attitude and enthusiasm for sport. This can be done by finding a local field or park and having a kick around or play games outside, I have seen and heard on many occasions young children playing in a tiny back yard blasting a football around while the parents stay inside and watch television. There are two fields close to them, one is 50 yards away and the other one is 300 yards away, why not take the children on the fields and let them run free and play football in a spacious facility under supervision from parents? Issues with this are working commitments, for parents who work they can find making time to go local parks a challenge. I can relate to this with my mum working nights this was rarely an option but I can't stress enough the importance of support from parents, my parents made an huge effort to organise lifts and opportunities for me to join clubs so that I wouldn't miss out on having a sporting childhood. 

To conclude, I have had fantastic opportunities and experiences of sport from a very young age and this has been the catalyst for my passion and love for sport. My family has been instrumental in creating sporting experiences for me, not many people can boast slide tacking their grandma at football and then she slide tackling you back! Making use of local facilities and decent weather can help ignite children to be enthusiastic and passionate about sport. 

Any comments or experience can be posted here or on twitter.

@dannymaynard92

Parental Issues Within Coaching

This post will discuss current issues with parents in a sports coaching and teaching environment and also look into what problems coaches face in terms of parents. 

Parents can be a massive hindrance to the coaching process in terms of interfering with the coaching taking place. Sometimes parents can give advice to their son or daughter but this can go against what the coach is trying to do. On the other hand parents can play a useful role in reinforcing what the coach is trying to do and this can result in positive impact on the coaching process. 

After speaking to another coach, he explains that in grass roots football parents provide many challenges for him as a coach but also for the officials. The coach works with an under 14's football team and has experienced some poor behaviour by the parents. When an official told the opposing team's manager to get off the field because he was actually standing on the pitch, the parents and other coaches started hurling abuse at the referee and this filtered down to the players. The players joined in with the parents and coaches abusing the referee and the coach who i spoke to said that the official handled it really well and stopped the game to ask the coach "Is this the example you set for your players?"

At times parents can be a coaches worst enemy and it is the same with teaching, teachers nowadays are afraid of giving students detentions because of the hassle the teacher will get off parents. When I discussed this with a few coaches, we came to a decision that if we all had a child that was in trouble we would back the teacher or coach. We would be more interested in why the child has been in trouble, because we would have raised the child better than that and they should be able to follow rules. 

In my experience I have found that too many parents wrap their children up in cotton wool. Don't get me wrong I don't want parents too care less about their children, however when they go to coaching sessions and tell their children that 'they don't have to do anything they don't want to do' this makes it difficult for the coach. Attitudes like that can spread around a group very quickly and I found this out the other week; one child in the group didn't want to run around the track for the warm up and because the child objected this resulted in a few of the other children sitting out of the next activity. 

Today's society is making it very difficult for coaches and teachers to control groups of children, this is because if the child gets told off and tells their parents the coach or teacher will have to deal with the aggravated parent. My advice to parents is to support the coaches and teachers, I understand the child will come up with the excuse of "everybody else was doing it" This doesn't excuse the behaviour and if the child has been made an example of then the teacher or coach should be praised for taking control of the situation and not be challenged. 

To conclude, children will copy their parents behaviour so it's important that parents set a good example for their children to follow. Coaches should be supported by parents as they will always consider the welfare of their participants and they wouldn't put their welfare in jeopardy. The parent should be more concerned as to why the child is misbehaving instead of 'having a go' at the teacher or coach for telling their child off.

Are Fitness Sessions Neglected in Session and Training Programmes?

In this post I will discuss whether the fitness component is being neglected in sessions and training programmes, the post will also look into the experiences I have had as an athlete and a coach in terms of delivering and taking part in fitness work. The benefits and repercussions will be explored to highlight the impact of fitness training. 

In my opinion I don't think coaches pay enough attention to fitness within their sessions and to be honest I never really thought too much about it. Over the last few months this had become more apparent to me because I have witnessed children between the ages of 8-13 not being able to run a lap around the track without stopping. Another example is watching a friend's football team who are  under 14's, I found that a few of the players where getting fatigued 20 minutes into a game, this was really surprising because the game was a friendly so the intensity of the match was lower than usual. 

As a coach this made me think about what I do in terms of fitness with my athletes, currently I don't really do too much circuit work due to facilities and the age of my participants however, in the new meso cycle I have planned a lot more fitness/circuit stations that I will incorporate into my sessions. For example a few circuit stations that are planned within the next few weeks will consist of activities such as; skipping, burpees, speed bounce, step ups, medicine balls, squats and I am looking to invest in some resistance bands. 

As an athlete I have experienced first hand the benefits of circuit sessions, they help focus and train other aspects of your training for example core stability. As a young distance runner I never really understood how important core stability really was until i became a coach and studied sports coaching at university. by having a stable core you are able to utilise and use all the benefit from a movement without wasting any unnecessary energy. Circuit sessions can be fun because you can work with partners and the stations are different every time so motivation is high. 

There are a lot of benefits of physical and circuit training, if the athlete or player is physically fitter and stronger theoretically they should be able to execute skills longer into competition and perform to a higher intensity. Also circuit sessions can help athletes develop and improve their technique in a range of activities for example, using medicine balls to help with explosive movements which can aid events such as; shot put and hammer etc. Circuit sessions are also helpful in injury prevention as specific exercises can help strengthen tendons and ligaments. There is an opening to work on muscular endurance and muscular strength in this type of training and this opportunity can be rare for many coaches because of facilities and equipment. Circuits can train all parts of the body where as if you did a normal sport specific session a few muscles groups will be missed or not be worked as much as they should. 

Some repercussions of circuit training are that the athletes must be able to perform the movements correctly as incorrect movements can cause injuries. The coach has to be cautious when using weights with young athletes as again incorrect movements can result in injury. Circuit training is seen to be too generic and this is one of the reasons that coaches don't pay much attention to it but the beauty of this type of training is that you can develop it and make as specific as you like. 

In conclusion, I don't think athletes and players do enough fitness work in terms of aerobic and circuit training. I as a coach have also neglected this area by not giving circuit and fitness training as much attention as I should in the past, however i will make a real effort to present my athletes with the benefits that circuit training brings in future sessions as from experience i have found that circuit sessions are fun and engaging because it challenges the performer in a different way. 

Trying to Teach Young Athletes about Pace Judgment

Over the last two years I have made a real effort to try and coach my athletes how to pace themselves properly. This is because when I ask the athletes to jog a lap of the track for the warm up it turns into a race and they comeback out of breathe. I don't attend competitions due to work commitments and the fact that parents and other coaches put far too much pressure on young athletes. Only events I attend are the cross countries and that is because I usually race later on in the day. 2 years ago I watched an under 11's cross country and witnessed something really disturbing, there were athletes crying when they were running. The reason for this was the athletes knew they were coming last and also they were really tired. Bare in mine this was when they were less than halfway round the one mile course. The start is ridiculously quick, even the senior men don't start as quick as them. I have made a real effort in the last year to equip my athletes with the experience to be able to complete a cross country and that they compete in cross countries more often.

When I was planning how I was going to tackle the pacing problem I looked into games that developed the athlete's pace judgment. I found a game called the gears game, this game helps the athletes feel 4 different paces. Gear 1 is walk, Gear 2 is slow jog, Gear 3 is fast jog and Gear 4 is sprint. The area used is 4 lanes and the athletes use gear 1 up the first lane then come down lane 2 in gear 2 and so on till they get to gear 4. The picture demonstrates this better. This game is effective because the athlete can experience different speeds and once they feel the speeds, they understand what pace you want them to run in. The coach can play around with the sequence instead of lane 1 being gear 1 etc. lane 1 can be gear 3, lane 2 can be gear 1 etc. 

The next game is an activity that I have developed myself and it is called the A-Z game, the athletes run around a track or a circuit with a partner. The first partner says A for Apple and the next partner says B for Banana and so on till they get to Z. When they get to Z they should have been running for at least 5 mins. To make the athletes run for longer or shorter you adapt the topic so instead of doing A-Z the athletes could do footballers and football clubs. The harder the topic the longer the athletes run for and this works the other way round. This game works alongside the gears game because when I do this activity i get the athletes to run in gear 2 because If they run any faster they will struggle to talk to each other. The reason that talking is emphasized is because of the energy systems, to be able to talk when running you have to be using the aerobic system, this is because you need to be using oxygen. As a coach you can find out if the athletes are using the correct system by asking them questions, if they can not answer due to being out of breathe they are in the lactic system rather than the areobic system. This games helps the athletes gain experience in running for a length of time and also helps them to relax when running. They relax because they don't think about running because their mind is concentrating on the game rather than how long they have been running for. 

I have even looked into changing the structure for cross country races for the under 11's because the main problem is the athletes run too fast into the first corner and then get fatigued. The athletes then start walking or they drop out. My solution to this is to change the race to a handi cap. The slower less experienced runners would run first and they would be set off in waves of 3 or 4 with a 30 second gap. I find that athletes are motivated when someone is going to catch them so they start running when they see someone gaining on them. The handicap would result in the race being closer in terms of finishing but also the emphasis on winning would be reduced. This is because it is about the time the athletes get rather than position. There are incentives for the faster more experienced runners because they can chase down runners in front and also in my opinion will help the middle pack improve a lot quicker by being able to stick with the faster runners when they reach them. This idea had mixed reactions, the coaches of the under 11s backed my idea and I had some really encouraging feedback however, the older members of the club are a bit more old fashioned and traditional because they explain that it defeats the object of a race. I totally agree with this point but it shouldn't be about racing at the age of 11 and under it should be about experience and enjoying cross county. 

To conclude; to get athletes to enjoy endurance work the emphasis has to be on fun, if the athletes don't enjoy endurance they will rapidly lose interest. From experience I have found it difficult to train my athletes to judge their paces however, I have found a little bit of success in terms of understanding, the athletes are starting to understand what paces they should run and when. Demonstrating this is a problem because they get a bit too excited and then they start to race each other. I have found that the A-Z game is very successful in getting the athletes to keep running without stopping for a few minutes and they run at a good pace which uses the correct energy system. Finally, if you have any advice or comments please share them or tweet me on @dannymaynard92 Thanks.

Feedback

Feedback is an element which is crucial in a athletes development, so many factors can influence the effectiveness of the feedback. These factors could be; how you say it, what you say, when you say it and who you say it to. These factors are all connected and to be able to deliver effective feedback you have to take all of them into consideration.

It is important you know your group of athletes and appreciate how they deal with feedback, some athletes like to be told straight what they did wrong and what they did right and they just want it said bluntly. Others deal with feedback a lot differently and can get disheartened when given critical or constructive feedback. So it is important you know your athletes and appreciate the way they deal with feedback. The timing of the feedback is crucial, the athlete needs to be allowed to make mistakes to an extent before the coach steps in, however some athletes don't understand that their are performing something incorrectly. My view on this is let the athlete make mistakes and then see if they can correct themselves before you jump in with solutions, they can watch others and they will start to realise and work it out for themselves. What you say is important and I touched on it with who you say it to, some of the athletes will respond differently to different ways of feedback. It's important you consider the language and content, tutors on coaching courses advise that you try and remain upbeat and focus a lot more on the positives and only touch on the negatives. The language is key to getting the response you want, the way you word the feedback can determine if its going to be effective or not. The last one Is how you say it, the way you say things can impact the athlete immensely, if you tell the athlete what they need to do they haven't learnt anything and will not understand why it was incorrect. It is crucial that the athlete understands why and this can be done by questioning. For example what did you do to get the javelin to go that far? Why did it land there? Tell me how you gripped it?

The best method I use in giving feedback to young children is the sandwich method, you tell them something positive about their performance, then something they need to work on and finally another positive. I have found this helps the athlete stay focused because they feel that they have succeeded and there is progress. One frustrating thing about coaching is trying to tell the athletes to be patient, they want to be the best and throw a javelin for example over a certain distance first time they throw it. I admire their attitude and enthusiasm but sometimes they get downhearted when they don't throw the javelin as far as the elite athletes do on the tele. Therefore this method helps nurture and control that enthusiasm by explaining that there is positives but also areas to work on.

There are 2 main feedback types; intrinsic and extrinsic, intrinsic is where the body gives the athlete feedback; for example when I jumped off the board it felt really good. Extrinsic feedback is when something external provides feedback, so for example when the athlete completes their jump they can refer to the results to check if it was a good jump or not. So results, crowd, distance can provide external feedback. When I coach my athletes at my club i try to focus more on intrinsic feedback like; how did that feel? Rather than how far did that go? I find that they can reflect on their own performance and depending on the experience of the athlete they could provide their own feedback. After they have dealt with their intrinsic feedback this can be verified extrinsically via the distance or the results. This sometimes cements the point and helps highlight progression. Extrinsic feedback is used in my coaching to compare results of performances and show progression. For example if motivation is down I will show the athlete past results to highlight progress, I will show results from when they started to latest results to identify how far they have come and improved.

To summarise, when delivering feedback to athletes there are some factors to consider; how you say it, what you say, when you say it and who you say it to. One of the better methods of delivering feedback is to use the sandwich method. This is done by providing a positive on the athletes performance then touch onto a negative or an improvement, then finish with another positive. There are 2 types of feedback which are intrinsic and extrinsic, intrinsic feedback comes from the athletes body and extrinsic is external so crowd, coaches and results. Any comments would be appreciated.