Coaches... What are they good for?

[Thunk]

I'm not a coach, and could certainly do with one!

But from my perspective, an observation: coaching is about a personal relationship. Archery is the medium of that relationship. If it is approached that way round it should work fine. Unfortunately, some coaches seem to think that it's all about correcting technique to some sort of arbitrary standard and ignore the personal bit. That will not (usually) fly!

One cause of this seems to be the shortage of coaches - it means that many (by no means all) are of an indifferent standard. The shortage means that many coaches at club level hardly get to shoot for themselves, and that perception puts many others off the idea of volunteering to train as a coach...

[greydog]

From reading peoples posts, I see alot of you have pointed to the human element of coaching, as in the approach, rather than the advice given, and at club level this is whats going to colour your view of coaches/ing in the future. We are lucky in one respect that we have lots of coaches at the club, but that's also part of the problem.

They range from hard working and enthusiastic to unable to tune a bow, from encouraging to dogmatic, but worst of all, there is a certain amount of competition between them.

You can imagine how this might effect someone just starting out in archery

I think Joe's comment of providing quality coaching at a county level is the right direction, but it would be nice if county coaches could come round to the clubs and do coaching weekends (paid for by club members) It would be encouraging for novice and experienced archers as well as the club coaches.

[Meddler]

Originally Posted by greydog

I think Joe's comment of providing quality coaching at a county level is the right direction, but it would be nice if county coaches could come round to the clubs and do coaching weekends (paid for by club members) It would be encouraging for novice and experienced archers as well as the club coaches.

Well, now...

We had this discussion this week as well. If you get someone in from outside, people tend to listen to them more. Even if the visiting Coach is saying exactly what the local Coach is saying.

Now that we're coming into summer, I've offered to go and travel to help people out. If they pay my expenses (and keep my caffeine level up), then I'm more than happy to help out (if that sounds callous, I'm talking about a 100 mile round trip to get to one of the nearer archers...). Oh, and if you want to do this, check out getting grants form county sports councils. They may come up with some readies for the event.

That is one of the things we are trying to get across to people, that if you coach you should offer to go to other clubs. Coaches should work in the County, County Coaches should work out in the Region, etc....

And yes, I do agree that involves commitment, time and money (although if expenses are paid, that doesn't come into play).

[greydog]

I agree, if you've gone through the coaching courses and you're a highly qualified coach then I would think most people would be happy to pay a fee for some high level coaching. After all, in the states you can book professional archers to do a weekend of coaching and bow tuning at your club.

Last year we had some longbow archers come to the club for a weekend of coaching and answering questions specific to that area of archery, there was a great response with members from nearby clubs coming over, the guys got their expenses paid and some cash for their time, everyone that went felt they came away with some helpfull tips and said it was a beneficial experience.

I think this sort of thing can only help archers and their local coaches as it encourages beginners to speak up when they have a problem, whereas before they might have just muddled through and kept quiet, and helps the coaches to keep up to date with new approaches to teaching.

[SLOWHAND]

Good coaching consists of two quite separate elements. The first and obvious one is a thorough knowledge of the equipment and technique needed for the sport. The second (and possbly more important element, especially to newcommers) is how to get this information accross in an understandable, friendly and supportive way. I know coaches who have a very good knowledge of the equipment and technique but are hopeless at teaching this on a person to person level. I also know coaches who are great at dealing with people but their knowledge of modern equipment and technique is limited.I am a qualified Badminton Coach and was lucky enough to have been taught how to coach by one of this countries best. 99% of the course I attended had nothing to do with the 'sport' but how to teach, encourage, and support those people being coached.

One of the problems with archery is that there are basically three distinct disciplines, recurve, compound, and longbow/traditional. One of the clubs I go to has two 'coaches' one shoots only longbow (and is a good coach in this discipline) and the other shoots mainly traditional bows, hard luck if you shoot compound or recurve.

[joetapley]

I think Joe's comment of providing quality coaching at a county level is the right direction, but it would be nice if county coaches could come round to the clubs and do coaching weekends (paid for by club members) It would be encouraging for novice and experienced archers as well as the club coaches.

Coaching at your local club would be ideal but what I meant was that as resources are limited you centralised it by the county running regular coaching sessions (with Level 3 coaches hopefully) at a venue to which the club archers travelled. The venue might shift around between county clubs. So the archers go to the coaches rather than the reverse.

I was wondering what do other sports do regarding coaching?

********, Cricket, Squash, Badminton, Golf, the list goes on. In a lot of cases students have to pay for coaching/instruction. Why should archery be any different. Who woud be happy to pay and if so how much?

[simon m]

Having just signed up to start shooting again in april, I probably will be needing a coach come the middle of summer......all of this thread does interest me......although I wouldn't like to think I was reducing someone else's shooting time for them to coach me, but I guess coaches take that onboard when they do the courses?.

I watch this thread with interest!

[simon m]

Originally Posted by rgsphoto

I was wondering what do other sports do regarding coaching?

********, Cricket, Squash, Badminton, Golf, the list goes on. In a lot of cases students have to pay for coaching/instruction. Why should archery be any different. Who woud be happy to pay and if so how much?

Golf, pay a pro per hour for lessons

Badminton, pay a coach per day/hour for lessons

Cricket, I had a decent coach at school(free), but I guess you club would pay a coach

[Rik]

I was thinking about competence this morning, while taking my son to school. Or rather: incompetence. That's not in the perjorative sense, but in the literal sense, where someone is not competent to do something.

The problem is; someone who is incompetent often does not know it. Take a group of people and ask them how good they are at X. The majority will say "about average", even when this is clearly statistically impossible. People who are bad at something, tend to underestimate how bad they are, unless they actually know something about what they are doing. The converse can also be true; people who are good at something underestimate how good they are compared to the general population. I think that's along the lines of "other people can't really be that bad...".

It's not what a coach knows, which is the issue. It's what they don't know, and whether they are aware that they don't know it!

Going back to the question of interfering advice and public disagreements:
If two people disagree on a matter of fact, it's generally the case that one of them is right and the other wrong (though both might be wrong...).
It is the duty (in a strict liability sense) of a coach to correct something they see done wrong, if it could lead to harm. It could be argued that it is also the duty of the coach to interfere (from an ethical viewpoint) if they see something done which could harm an archer's performance. But the problem here is one of competence. Who has it right? If the guy interfering is right, then his action is justified. If not, then it's a problem.

I have a feeling that, in general, discussion among coaches must be public. It's not good to have ruminations behind closed doors and then hand out pronouncements ex cathedra. The discussion, the argument, the evidence and the conclusions, must be on public display. Not everyone will be interested, but those who are should have no grounds for complaining that the whole process wasn't open to scrutiny. But I'm not talking about a debating chamber here. It's more like peer review on academic publications...