The late French Philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was well known for his explorations of power, control, and social discourse. He was particularly critical of how political institutions organize and control workers, students, soldiers, and prisoners to the extent that they surrender their power and become passive and docile bodies (Denison & Mills, 2014). Although this criticism emerged from the social-political sphere, they are also applicable to sports coaching, particularly when coaching becomes mainly about the power to control, monitor, and intervene to the extent that athletes become passive learners.
High Discipline + High Control = High Performance?
The prevailing belief among sporting institutions, coaches, and even athletes is that high discipline and a tightly controlled environment are essential to fostering mental and physical toughness. However, researchers have consistently found that such training regimes limit mental toughness and performance. For example, Denison and Mills (2014) observed that when athletes become passive learners in the same way that people “surrender their power and become docile bodies,” they tend to struggle with decision-making and competitive pressure.
Such observations should not be surprising given that there is hardly anything structured and certain about competition, which is contrary to the prescriptive training regimes where athletes are forced to conform to prescribed methods with barely any room to choose or make decisions!
What can coaches do differently?
Since athletes are the ones who have to respond to constant changes in a dynamic environment, how effective can training be if it is the coach and not the athlete who is in total control of the training process and the decision-making mantle?
No, I am not suggesting that athletes should be responsible for designing their training. What I am suggesting is to design practice sessions that give them more control and autonomy to explore, try, push for another repetition, or call it a day.
For example, instead of prescribing workouts such as 8 x 800 meters with a fixed recovery time and fixed starting and ending point, like what a typical distance running coach will do…
Try mixing it up with…
Providing athletes with a ‘zone’ where they can choose to end the repetition 100 meters before or after the fixed end/start point. They will still run at a particular intensity, but they can choose to start or end the run anywhere within this 200-meter zone, and they will also be in control of their recovery time.
In this way, athletes will have to figure out how to manage their fatigue and reflect on whether they were really tired. Could they have pushed on for another 100m? At what point did their form deteriorate? Should they have stopped earlier? What made them tired and why? (Denison & Mills, 2014) Such practice designs provide opportunities for generative discussions with their coach to help them develop their ability to make decisions under competitive pressure.
“We believe the relationship between conformity and control, the making of a docile body, and awareness and independence, the making of a thinking athlete, that currently defines coaches’ practices is totally out of balance.”
Denison and Mills (2014)
Which sport do you coach? What are some constraints that you can set within which your athletes are allowed to explore and make their own decisions? I would love to hear your ideas. Lastly, kindly share this post with coaches who would benefit from this information.
Coach Hansen
References:
Avner, Z., Denison, J., Jones, L., Boocock, E., & Hall, E. T. (2020). beat the game: A foucauldian exploration of coaching differently in an Elite Rugby Academy. Sport, Education and Society, 26(6), 676–691. https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2020.1782881
Denison, J., & Mills, J. P. (2014). Planning for distance running: Coaching with Foucault. Sports Coaching Review, 3(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/21640629.2014.953005
Coach Hansen 