To Coach Or Not To Coach

[Cakemeister]

I know we've had this before but...

I've been asked to attend an assistant coach course. Popular opinion is that coaching ruins your own shooting. The argument is that at this starter level it's just about being able to take beginner groups so that your own shooting really doesn't come into it- my shooting won't suffer. Any thoughts?

[Little Miss Purple]

At our club the beginners are coached before the main session begins - this shouldn't affect your shooting if the same applies.

I have heard how you can learn to identify your own problems by seeing them in others??

[Furface]

I'd go for it. It didn't ruin my shooting - I'd already done that long ago.
I think what happens is that you do start becoming aware of the limitations of your own style, and start working on it. For some, the raw uncoached form that got you to Bowman or beyond needs reassembling radically before you can progress. You start the disassembly, but, without help from outside, the reassembly can be tricky. So you give it up as a bad job and concentrate on helping others.
Surely theer is someone at your club who can help you!

[Barry C]

In my club, we would spend one year teaching the beginners the basics for one hour every session, then next year we would leave these beginners to teach the basics to the new intake. To keep the standard high while having a coffee break we would watch the new teachers shoot and teach and pick out any problems. Its good because its self sustaining and no body loses too much shooting time. It has worked so well that we didnt renew the club coaches contract and now the club is the strongest ever depth wise.

We did notice that the best coaches had never been near to a GNAS coach course. It appeared the good archers didnt feel the need for it, the bad archers who wanted to coach went on the course and taught their bad way of shooting to the beginenrs. So we avoid gnas coaches. I understand not all gnas coaches are awful, its just from our experience all we have met are.

If you have the time ( I don't ) to both coach and shoot, go for it. We need people to coach. Without coaches Archery would vanish. Archery clubs need to take coaching seriously, without it we end with clubs comprised of the "blind leading the blind" not naming any names, ahem...

[Tobytoolbag]

We have three or four coaches at our club, and since there are seldom enough novices to need all four of us at the same time, we (theoretically!) rotate who's coaching on a weekly basis...

It has two advantages:-
1) Coaches get to shoot three weeks out of every month, or two out of every month if we've got a large contingent of beginners.

2) The beginners will get a fresh perspective on where they're going wrong each week. Although we've all got different styles and slightly different takes on how it should be done, the basics are the same, and it's the basics that we're teaching to our eager novices.

As I said, that's the theory. In practice, it's usually me that gets to coach since the rest of 'em have got too quick in setting up their equipment and heading for the shooting line!

Good thing I've set up a little 20m range in the back garden, work from home, and can snatch an hour's practice at lunchtime when the weather's good (which it hasn't been for months!)

[Badger]

It can have a profound effect on your own shooting.....you start to analyse every shot you make!
Chill out...enjoy.

[Cakemeister]

Weee-ll I'm going to have a look- level 1 coaching induction day next Sunday. Will report back!!

[Small Monkey]

Originally Posted by Barry C

We did notice that the best coaches had never been near to a GNAS coach course. It appeared the good archers didnt feel the need for it, the bad archers who wanted to coach went on the course and taught their bad way of shooting to the beginenrs.

I've noticed a this in some cases and not others. I think it depends on the level of the GNAS qualification, and on the person in question. The people who run the level 1 course here came and gave us a 1 day guide to coaching beginners earlier this year, covering what you learn on the level one course. It improved our coaching no end!

However, there are some very good coaches out there who have learnt by experience, and because they are excellent archers themselves. Also, I've seen some bad archers who are level 1 fully qualified trying to coach people, and it's not been pretty.


Anyway, that aside, (as there are good and bad points to anything in life!) I'd say do you have the time to coach? Do you have enough free time to go to all the sessions? Are you willing to go along to club sessions to coach people and give up your own shooting time as a result? And most importantly of all - do you enjoy coaching? Because if you don't want to be a coach, then don't be a coach!

[Cakemeister]

I think what I'll take from these Level 1 sessions is being clear about what I do know, and also what I don't- I want to be able to run a beginner's course confident in what I'm saying will enable them to be (a) safe and (b) have a foundation of correct principles on which to build, and that's it. Oh, (c) to have fun...