Coach planning & your psychology

Project yourself to a year from now…picture yourself coaching…

1. what does better look like?
2. what does better feel like?
3. what will your players experience within this better coaching practice?

Spend a bit of time formulating the end in mind…consider multiple factors – your knowledge, your delivery – technical, tactical, physical, biopsychosocial.

What does your coaching practice a year from now

1. Look like?
2. Feel like?
3. What will others see
4. What will your players experience?

I can’t speak for technical, nor tactical, nor physical…but I can urge you in the direction of the.

Those first three components are underpinned by the biopsychosocial, perhaps you would like to,,,,

1. Improve your self-skills?
2. become a little more self-aware as a coach,
3. Engage in improved self-control,
4. optimise your ability to self-reflect.
5. Or perhaps, under the rubric ‘self-skills’ you’d like to look after yourself a little better – engage
   with better well-being.

Alternatively

1. practically improve your coaching. Yes, this is largely biopsychosocial – perhaps you want to
2. be a better teacher – to communicate more effectively or to listen with greater intent.
3. understand ‘learning’ in greater depth – you might want to
4. incorporate a learning theory to underpin your coaching practice
5. enhance your knowledge around the cognitive side of your sport – anticipation and decision-making.

Perhaps!…..

We can go in numerous directions when we consider the biological, psychological, and social components and their interaction.

1. How about your environment (a psychologically-informed one? A resilient one? Or how about game-day motivation, game-day preparation, or game-day mental skills?)
2. How about improving your ability to tend to the needs of the individual.
3. Do you have some communication tools from psychological frameworks such as motivational interviewing in order to manage player behaviour and
   develop player characteristics? How exciting could that be?
4. Or how about learning more around managing emotions – inter and intrapersonally.

Finally, perhaps you’d rather go down the group route.

Leadership, teamship, relationship. The three ships! Can you enhance your ability to engage players across your team?

You see, psychology in coaching isn’t just ‘psychology’. It really is a discipline integrated into every facet of coaching. It happens every second of every minute
you’re coaching. It’s omnipresent!

And this is why psychology is a big deal for coach development 

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