I recently had a little discussion on Twitter about whether you can coach without an underpinning theory of learning. I thought you had to nail your colours to the wall. Lee Conroy respectfully disagreed.
We didn’t get too deep into the debate, but it did get me thinking about my own position so I thought I would make it clear here. The quick summary is this:
You should flip between methods. You can flip between approaches but eventually you need to land on an underpinning theory of coaching.
What do I mean by this?
There’s are broadly three levels to coaching:
The methods we use (what we do)
The approach those methods are embedded within (how we do it)
The underpinning theory (why we do it)
Methods
Methods are the day to day things. The drills, the small-sided games, the activities. The verbs of sport.
These are agnostic. They are not tied to any specific approach or theory.
You can operate as a coach purely on the level of methods and everyone can have a great time.
However, if you want to get more from your coaching you should put certain methods together into an approach. (And you probably already do)
Approaches
An approach is an opinion of how to best use the methods. For example, perhaps your approach is to groove the movements first, then add pressure. That’s very common. Other approaches are the constraints-led approach, Game Sense, TGfU and the digital-video games approach.
These provide a common framework for you to work. It’s more progressive and less scattergun. If you are coaching cricket and you want players to get better at all, an approach is far more effective than randomly picking methods.
You can flip between approaches, but probably not that often.
It’s harder to change approach but not impossible. An approach needs longer to establish if its working; a few sessions at least. Ideally a full block to see what progress happens. An approach might take years to bear fruit (although you can see some changes quickly).
Approaches all pull from the same pool of methods, so you can easily run a block using the constraints-led approach, then another block using more traditional error identification and correction approach.
Truth is, most coaches coach from some kind of an approach even if they don’t know it. The one most of us use is the way we were coached. There’s no drama if coaches want to stick with that. However, it’s also possible to try a different way for a while. You might find one approach works better with different players than another.
We still have flexibility at this level.
Theories
Finally, at the root is a theory. Most coaches don’t spend a lot of time in the philosophical and psychological roots of coaching but it is always there because it informs how was learn movements and increase skill.
The dominant theory, as you may know, is called “information processing” (IP). It theorises the brain as a computer. We learn by copying predetermined templates of movements until they become unconscious. It’s a linear progression from unskilled to skilled.
The newer theory is called ecological dynamics (ED). With ED there are no templates. Instead we learn through interaction between us, the task and the environment. It’s a non-linear system. That emerges rather than progresses along a fixed path.
This video explains the differences in detail.
As a side note, you can use the same methods and approaches but with different underpinnings. Although this will lead to sessions that look very different because your underlying assumptions have changed.
And the differences between these are fundamental: Learning can’t be linear one day and non-linear the next. We can’t learn by perception-action coupling on Tuesdays and templates on Fridays. It’s like being a Christian one week and a Buddhist the next.
We have to pick the one we think is right because it informs everything we do.
Flexibility
So yes, we should be flexible and adaptable to i visual player needs. Mainly we do this with methods, sometimes with approaches. Yet also we should be firm in our underpinning theories because you can’t switch between those.