About Coaching

I belong to a “Coaches Exchange” group on Facebook and was stunned by some of the comments, like:

… Do we really need a Warm-up and Cool-down? What’s the purpose? …

… We only have so much practice time, etc., and we can’t spend valuable time on that stuff! We have to pay for that pool facility (swim coach) …

What are the real issues and problems in sports? Indeed, not all coaches are professionally trained or educated in kinesiology or physical education. Moms and Dads often serve as volunteer coaches, wanting to ensure their children compete in swimming, basketball, soccer, hockey, etc., but have neither the education, coaching background, or experience. But they coach nevertheless because overall, physical education (degraded as “PE”) and the Amateur Coach status are not highly valued by our society. People tend to think, “Oh heck, I can coach too. It’s easy.” In addition, former elite or professional athletes are hired as youth coaches because of their past career success, but they do not always make the better or best coaches, in my opinion, as they frequently resort to methods they trained under in an outdated system while others try to imitate their elite training methods at the developmental level.

My immediate neighborhood has several pools, athletic fields (soccer), and hockey rinks. I took the time to observe several training sessions in various sports. My findings: very few coaches conducted a correct and progressive Warm-up and/or Cool-down session, if any! Running five laps around the soccer field, doing dull forward-backward arm circles, or those outdated jumping jacks is neither valuable nor exciting. Skating several rounds around the hockey rink was the most boring activity I could imagine, and it couldn’t have been functional for the tasks in the forthcoming training session! It raises the Heart Rate (HR) but is insufficient to prepare athletes for the training session. Coaches are supposed to provide a safe learning and training environment, which starts with proper and correct physical preparation! Raising the HR through aerobic and dynamic activities is essential, but general and specific muscle groups must be warmed depending on the skills or tasks ahead. That means not only ‘doing’ the usual exercise routine but also including sport-specific exercises and components needed for the pending training session to avoid the risk of injuries.

Children and Youth Sports: The Catch-22

Is it all about a specific sport, winning and establishing the coaching reputation, or is it more… that is, developing children and youth to help them become functional members of society, as stated previously? The new approach to the former traditional Warm-up and Cool-down routines is somewhat different as it includes training in physical, technical, psychological, mental, and wellness skills, which are now considered critical.

I firmly believe that children and youth sports are heading toward a more severe crisis stage unless we, as coaches, change the approach to developing younger athletes. According to sports sociologists, children and youth want to participate in sports and have FUN simultaneously! However, sports training has become far more complex compared to past decades because the greater emphasis is placed on ‘winning at all cost.’ Pressure to reach elite-level sports starts as early as possible, creating stress at the developmental level while “Winning – Keep winning and setting records” are the ultimate goals for Elite athletes. As a result of such demands, it has become acceptable and expected for younger athletes to train year-round to ensure their success, thereby leading to physical and mental issues. As mentioned before, current research points to an increase in anxiety, depression, mental and physical breakdown, suicide attempts, and actual deaths among elite and even lower-level athletes. Stanford University reports that their female soccer Star, goalie Katie Meyer (22), died by suicide in her dormitory room on March 4, 2022, while twenty-one-year-old Star cross-country runner Sarah Shulze, University of Wisconsin, died on April 13, 2022. Her parents revealed that she took her own life because balancing athletics, academics, and the demands of daily life overwhelmed her in a single, desperate moment, the posting said. At least four more NCAA athletes have died by suicide in the two months since Meyer’s death, three of them young women. Several High school volleyball players committed suicide within months of each other in the Fall of 2021, and school administrators were perplexed! Really?

For athletes, mental health is as important as physical health. Researchers in Australia encourage sports organizations to use a ‘three-pronged approach’ to supporting high-performance athletes by equipping them with skills to manage distress and training coaches to recognize and identify signs of mental health concerns early (Purcell, Gwyther & Rice, 2019). I agree with the authors that age-group coaches should start early to work with such issues, not wait until athletes are teens because it is too late.

Recently, researchers have also asserted that sports participation is very likely going to drop off as children and youth, forced to stay at home and be idle, have turned their attention increasingly to social media (especially TikTok), with noticeable effects on their emotional, psychological, and social well-being. To attract participants, quality programs must be age and developmental-appropriate, athlete-centered, progressively challenging, well-planned, and provide a safe training environment to ensure gratifying sports experiences (Liberman & MacIntosh, 2023, cited in SIRC, 2023). From the beginning of my career, I have consistently maintained that coaching is an ‘Art and Science’ and that the importance of hydration, appropriate and suitable sports nutrition, and healthy sleeping patterns have often been discounted in the past because coaches tend to focus more on training methods and technical components. These critical components for performance must be addressed for effective training and successful competitions but also become part of athletes’ lifestyles.

Since the mid-1980s, elementary schools have either totally deleted physical education or conducted programs sparingly with rotating district instructors, usually not well-versed in multi-physical and sports activities. Therefore, coaches have their ‘work cut out’ to draw former athletes back to programs and attract new participants who lack physical and functional fitness, gross motor skills, and movement competencies. However, sports programs may be the only opportunity for children and youth to develop and enhance general athleticism and movement competencies. This is no easy task, given the lack of general fitness as documented in current research.

The Old Method: Physical Activity as Punishment

This issue has received more and more attention because verbal, physical, and emotional abuse and body-shaming in children and youth sports are reported at increasingly higher rates. Using physical activity as a form of punishment for lack of concentration or focus, training errors by younger athletes (due to their low attention span), or poor performance by older ones, has been reported in numerous sports. Verbal abuse and humiliating vocabulary create anxiety and depression and have led to suicidal thoughts and, indeed, actual suicides among teen athletes, according to research. Abusive behavior violates modern coaching ethics and infringes upon the ‘Bill of Rights for Athletes’ as they are entitled to a safe training and competition environment.

Physical abuse was the “common and accepted thing to do” in the past! Some examples were running punitive laps around the track ‘till you drop’ or ‘killer laps’ at Christmas Swim camps, 200 sit-ups, or an X number of push-ups. Maybe some of you remember those hated “PE” classes, running around the field! It was seen as a form of ‘character building and mental toughness’ driven by such slogans: No pain – No gain! Nobody loves a loser, or winning isn’t everything – it’s the only thing!’ And… sports media kept validating these phrases, crediting the late coach Vince Lombardi (Green Bay Packer Football). However, this is a misquote … he stated, “Winning isn’t everything, but the will to win is everything!” Such ‘hyped’ coaching is no longer acceptable! “How one thinks/feels about the athlete” as a person and human being shape the foundation for one’s coaching philosophy, i.e., training the holistic person versus a ‘human performance machine.’ Such a personal outlook or coaching attitude plays a major part in the program planning process.

References:

Liberman, E., & MacIntosh, E. (2023, November 22). Elevating athlete voices: The path to safe sport in Canada. Ottawa, ON, Canada: The Sport Information Resource Centre (SIRC).

Purcell, R., Gwyther, K., & Rice, S.M. (2019). Mental health in elite athletes: Increased awareness requires an early intervention framework to respond to athlete needs. Sports Medicine. Open 5(46). Springer Open.

Schloder, M.E. (2024). E.P.P.T. Effective pre & post training for age group swimmers. Calgary, Alberta, Canada: www.coachingbest.com