World Squash Federation Coach Education Programme Level 3

Coach Development W - This module explores the personal qualities of the coach and how they are manifested within the coaching process – to enhance the relationship between coach and player. W- The challenge for coaches is that individuals are unique (and human!) and nothing ever operates in isolation – everything effects everything else. The coach needs to be able to view the coaching environment in different ways. W - Planning and reviewing is part of an ongoing, continual process – it happens both regularly and frequently. H- Keep it simple: Plan – Do - Review

Plan Do Review

The review process Focus on objectives, identify ‘what went well’ ‘what went less well’ and why, discuss and invite structured feedback, identify and summarise key learnings (what would you do differently), change your actions / behaviour to account for what you have learnt.

Coaching leadership W- Coaching is about growing and guiding your athletes towards a shared vision and in doing so developing yourself. It is about leading people. W - Listening to your athletes, understanding their needs and then working with them to help them succeed. W - Frequent reflection, during both good, enjoyable times and more challenging periods is important in maintaining motivation, becoming more self-aware and developing as a coach. H - Take time to reflect on your own leadership role and what it means to you as a coach. Before you can hope for anyone else to understand you and what you’re about, you first need to understand yourself.

Why do you coach?

Coaching philosophy & Values W-The aim of this section is for coaches to develop their understanding of coaching styles and their own coaching philosophy and values (and how they develop). W –Coaching Philosophy can be defined as a coach’s belief and framework for self-development that guide behaviour (actions). Coaching values are the principles that are most important to you and they influence your behaviour. Having a clear coaching philosophy helps to maintain motivation in your coaching and ensure that you enjoy the experience too. It also helps the coach to recalibrate and maintain perspective. W - Frequent reflection, during both good, enjoyable times and more challenging periods is important in maintaining motivation, becoming more self-aware and developing as a coach.

H -What type of coach do I want to be H -What type of coach do I want to be? Three examples of coaching styles are: autocratic, democratic, humanist. Autocratic – coach is the independent decision maker. Democratic – coach allows high levels of participation from the athlete in decision making Humanist – a player centred approach, based upon the athlete’s personal growth through active engagement in the coaching experience

Exercise Discuss in pairs what your preferred coaching style is and how it has evolved. Also share how, on occasions, you have ‘flexed’ your style to benefit the development of your athlete(s). Improving your philosophy – identify your strengths and weaknesses (self-analysis, but also through asking others for feedback), recognise your values & beliefs. Consider 3 actions you want to stop, start and continue.

Identifying the coaching values that are important you (Table 1). This exercise will help you identify or review the values that you hold as important. These may change over time and you should explore them to better understand yourself. This is a starting point.

Conclusion Self-development is critically important if the coach is to maintain a relevance to athletes, the game and become the very best they can be. A clear and evolving coach philosophy, with clearly identifiable values, provide a framework to empower the coach and make good decisions across a range of situations, and array of different individual athletes. Planning and reviewing fit symbiotically with a developing coaching philosophy, values and a growing sense of awareness of self.

Culture W - Group culture is built from individuals’ values, beliefs, intentions, behaviours and commitment to the shared vision and goals. Creating a group culture first requires you to understand your own perspective of culture W - Culture provides a sense of group energy and understanding that enables a group of individuals to lift their collective performance and commitment to outperform their individual efforts. W - Actively seek opportunities to increase your breadth and depth of knowledge and understanding across the full range of guiding principles of player performance. H - Coaches should be active in the formation of their groups’ culture through their leadership, while letting the athletes contribute to it in their own way too. Using open discussions with group members, you can identify the values, attitudes, and beliefs that you and your athletes want to act as the foundation of the group culture

There are many ways to foster a heathy , positive culture. Some ways could include Getting to know each other through fun activities Setting goals together and allowing everyone to have buy in to the group goals Working out a plan of how to achieve the goals Assigning roles to each team member so everyone has ownership. Asking questions of the athletes and the team and solving them together. Giving and receiving feedback both individually and collectively

Identify your own personal values Help others to clarify their own personal values Openly share your philosophies Look for alignment of values Develop meaningful social relationships Collectively buy into the bigger vision (We vs. I) Involve each other in setting personal and group goals to achieve vision Educate and support everyone in their role(s) Celebrate each other's contributions

Break

Question? Excluding physical and tactical skills. What are the characteristics great players have?

Mental Toughness W- When an athlete can continue to perform their job, to do the job they’ve been trained to do, regardless of what happens to them in training or competition”. W - There will be times and there will be situations where you can see an athlete is no longer doing the job they were trained to do because something has happened to them. W- Where an athlete has travelled to another venue and the court conditions are poor compared to their normal environment; Where an athlete has missed an opportunity that perhaps they should have converted or made an error at a critical time of the match; Where an athlete gets a poor decision from a referee; Where a player breaks a string or racket and has to replace the racket with their spare one;  When an athlete’s fatigued………….

HOW Create training practices and create situations in preparation which can duplicate and mimic competition conditions; you can make training more challenging and more demanding than the competition the athletes are preparing for and, in doing so, enhance the athlete’s mental toughness. Mental toughness is real. Mental toughness is measurable. Mental toughness is something that can be coached.

SELF-CONFIDENCE W- Self-Confidence comes from knowing – knowing that I can / we can “do it” on the court in any environment at any time. W- When athletes are winning, each winning performance becomes the strongest possible form of evidence and the self- confidence “wheel” begins to spin…. more evidence leads to more self-confidence and winning performances which in turn provides more evidence which leads to increased self- confidence and more winning performances and so on and so on.  W - When you have athletes with a low sense of Self-Belief, require a lot of help, support and consistent quality coaching to help them create Self-Confidence. They need to be convinced they can perform through presenting them with evidence of their preparation and prior performances

How There are five key actions coaches can take to help create self- confidence in athletes – or more accurately, ways coaches can provide an environment where athletes have the opportunity to build evidence and thereby create self-confidence themselves: 1. Create opportunities for athletes to learn by doing.  2. Create opportunites for athletes to learn by problem solving and overcoming adversity.  3. Set standards and attitudes high – and do not compromise on them. 4. Teach athletes how to lead, empower them to lead and give them the responsiblity to sustain a preparation environment which consistently provides quality evidence.  5. Re-set the bar often – including your own – success is a moving target. Continually shift standards and attitudes higher – strive to ensure your own learning, development and commitment is greater than that of your athletes.

Commitment W- Uncompromising in doing whatever it takes to achieve your goals Hard (Right) Way v Easy Way – always seems to be doing the right things (Success is a choice) Doing things for themselves responsible for their gear nutrition additional training etc W- It underpins everything. Because athletes (and coaches and managers and staff for that matter) who are truly engaged with what they are doing, consistently train, prepare and compete to their full potential and … from potential comes peak performance W- All the time!!!

“They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” The key to all of this lies in coaching and in particular in coaching by engagement – and not coaching by enforcement The effectiveness of training programs, workout designs, skill development routines and fitness activities are dependent on how engaged the athlete is in the activities. The one thing that separates great coaching from average coaching is engagement: The ability to consistently engage the hearts and minds of your athletes – it’s what we strive for – it is the very essence of coaching – it is what makes coaches (and athletes) feel alive. This is critical to anyone who wants to succeed at the top level: talent is not enough – unless that talent is driven by an unrelenting desire to be the best and that desire is supported by an uncompromising commitment to excellence in all aspects of preparation. “They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”

Motivation (GP4) Players along the ‘rocky road’ of the performance pathway need to continuously participate in effortful and challenging activities. The coach manages player engagement with these activities by being aware of the following factors; Competency- ~70% success rate – Tool 0-100 Autonomy- The player needs to feel part of the decision- making process for each session. Choice of games/ intentions, areas of development, placement of shots/targets etc. (GP4) Relatedness-Show the player how the session fits into their game. Strengths and weaknesses Tool WWWH=PDA Candidate coaches to identify the pneumonic of CAR in a range of scenarios

“They will forget what you say, they may forget what you do,but they will never forget how you made them feel”