Let’s Reflect: Why Bother?

Despite increasing acceptance of reflective practices as part of coach education, there seems to be little understanding on what reflection is, why it’s necessary, and ultimately why we are NOT doing it!

10 years of coaching experience may simply mean doing the same thing 10 times over.

What’s Reflection?

It’s often understood (NOT incorrectly) as the process of hindsight and learning what needs to be done in order to improve practice in the future. According to one definition, it involves “paying critical attention to the practical values and theories which inform everyday actions, by examining practice reflectively and reflexively.”

Why the Need for Reflection?

Indeed, coaches learn best through coaching itself (see previous article) but on the same note, 10 years of coaching experience may simply mean doing the same thing 10 times over. Learning is not an automatic by product of experience!

Research in different fields have shown that performance improves significantly when learners deliberate on and codify their experience. Coaching is no exception and here’s a research project specific to Sport Coaching. It IS possible to train and learn smarter instead of simply harder!

Reflection Cycle

Why we are NOT practicing reflection

I learnt about reflection during my formal education years in PE and later in Psychology. Also came across the mention of it countless times. You would assume that I must be quite an avid “reflector” having been exposed to it so often. Wrong! Despite being reminded of its importance for almost two decades, I’ve never treated it seriously until about five to six years back.

Here’s why it took me ages to get started! Pretty sure some of you will be able to relate…

Too Complex
The Gibb’s Reflective Cycle was my introduction to reflection during my undergraduate years. I was probably too immature at that time to understand the whole process which seemed weird and unnecessary.
No Time or A Waste of Time
There’s always too much work to do and deadlines to meet hence it feels all too counter intuitive to spend time doing something that does not have any “immediate” impact.
“Airy Fairy”
Most structured reflection involves some sort of “getting in touch with your feelings” shite was took me a while to get used to. Besides, I’m biased against persons who seem to be only thinking all the time (for good reason!). Always felt that these fellas are simply procrastinators.

So what made me finally decide to practice reflection regularly?

Well, like all coaches, I’ve always looking for ways to improve my athletes’ performance. Despite not practicing reflection myself, I decided to be a “hypocrite” and made reflection a part of every training session for the primary school rope-skipping team that I used to coach. I even designed simple thinking routines to help them make better sense of their training and experiences. For the athletes that I was working with as a psychology coach, I made a more deliberate effort to improve the quality of our facilitated conversations.

In short, it was my athletes’ success that inspired me to get started on regular reflection – my primary school athletes won three out of four division titles that year (despite having less training sessions due to budget cuts), and my psychology athletes were able to understand and apply the mental skills more effectively!

“Learning is not an automatic by-product of experience!”

As a coach, I began to get generative ideas for organizing practice and effective feedback. I also became more aware of how my own emotions affect my athlete’s learning. Instead of being a waste of time, regular reflection actually “saves time” – I was clear about what worked and what didn’t, and manage to get more done with less time.

Is “No time” also your excuse?

If you would like to start practicing reflection, here’s a link to reflective models that you could use. It’s advisable to follow a model for a start since hindsight tends to be biased and superficial. Ironically, the model that I use for reflection today is the Gibb’s Reflective Cycle! The same model that turned me off from reflecting when I was 21 years young!

Coach Hansen

Formal vs. Non-Formal Coach Education

“An exemplary coach and better than many school coaches that I’ve come across.”

That was my reply to colleagues who asked about the lesson observation I did for Coach Tim Kwo Liang while he was coaching at Kranji Secondary School last week. My colleagues and I are developing a competency assessment, and Coach Tim had kindly agreed to allow us to use him as a “test subject”.

Coach Tim has been a table tennis coach for more than 20 years. Although he has the relevant technical certifications for the sport, he has not gone through the formal education pathway (classroom lessons followed by a written test) to earn his theory accreditation. Despite that, I found his lesson to be highly organized and engaging (although this was not reflected by his lesson plan). He has a positive approach and made time to personally coach and play against every single one of the 21 students present. He provided quick demos and specific feedback, and nippily modify the drills according to the ability of his students.

The experience with Coach Tim reignited an internal debate that I’ve been having regarding Formal vs Non-Formal coach education. Personally, I’m biased against formal coach education even though both forms of education has helped me develop both as a sport and psychology coach. I feel that coaches learn best when they are coaching, through their own research, and mentorship (even discussions in forums). Hence, over the next few days, I went through some studies (see references at the foot) that have been published on this topic to test against my own bias.

Here are some common findings from these Formal vs. Non-formal studies:

Formal education may lack context, meaning, and individualization is limited. Since assessment drives learning, coaches may end up learning how to pass the assessment rather than how to coach.
Less formal opportunities such as workshops, mentoring, peer discussions and even reading are found to be more meaningful and contextualized. Some findings have shown that coaches also learned without the direct guidance of others during their day-to-day coaching activities.
In a Canadian study, it was found that unguided and self-directed learning provided the largest contribution to youth ice hockey coach development.
Less formal education may lack quality control, direction, feedback, and innovation.
Coaches may have difficulties accessing non-formal opportunities due to the competitive nature of sport at all levels, i.e., some coaches who are deemed as competitors or outliers may be excluded from participating in certain workshops or sharing.
Formal education (e.g., tertiary education) has a better capacity to lead to the development of critical thinking skills, i.e. reflection. Critical self-reflection is vital to continued success for coaches. (i.e., I’m sure we all know of “experienced coaches” who continue to stick to the same old coaching practices despite having coached for decades).

Objectively speaking, both formal and non-formal forms of education should be valued, and there shouldn’t be a dichotomy between the two. However, since the pervasive perception here is that formal education’s better and highly educated (i.e., having a degree in sport science or PE) persons probably make the best coaches, more should be done to recognize and respect the value of non-formal coaching. Any potential disadvantages of non-formal coaching can be rectified by adding elements of structure, reflection, and evaluation. We also need to shift from the traditional classroom “download” style of formal coach education, to one that is more facilitated and applied.

p.s. I reckon this fixation on formal education is not exclusive to sport coaching. Singaporeans and employers (especially the civil service) on a whole still buy into the notion that you need to have a degree in order to be qualified to do a job!

Coach Hansen

References:

Cushion, C. J., Armour, K. M. and Jones, R. L., Coach Education and Continuing Professional Development: Experience and Learning to Coach, Quest, 2003, 55, 215-230.

Werthner, P. and Trudel, P., A New Theoretical Perspective for Understanding How Coaches Learn to Coach, The Sport Psychologist, 2006, 20, 196-210.

Wright, T., Trudel, P. and Culver, D., Learning How to Coach: The Different Learning Situations Reported by Youth Ice Hockey Coaches, Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 2007, 12, 127-144.

Rynne et al., High Performance Sport Coaching: Institutes of Sport as Sites for Learning

Bpàt-jù-ban

The Thai word bpàt-jù-ban means ‘Present’ or ‘Now’. I learnt this from the participants during the recent ‘IPC Intro to Para Coaching Course’ in Korat, Thailand.

IPC Korat — International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Intro to Para-Coaching Course at Korat, Thailand

While I was sharing with the Thai coaches why it was important for an athlete to refocus on the process goals whenever she “time traveled” to outcome goals or past mistakes. One of the coaches shared (through a translator) that this was similar to bpàt-jù-ban – a Buddhist notion familiar to the Thais about not dwelling on the past nor dream of the future, but to be in the present/ bpàt-jù-ban.

Bajuoan small — The word under Process is bpàt-jù-ban

I got excited when I learnt of this as my main purpose for coaching mental skills has always been to help athletes see the relevance of these skills not only in sport, but in life.

So What Does it mean to be Present or Process Focused?

I would explain it as simply keeping things simple, and the best way to keep things simple is to be in the present – to be in the here and now by focusing on the process instead of the outcome. Sounds simple? Well, it’s simple but definitely not easy. In fact, it is even counter-intuitive!

When you relate this to training and goals…It simply means to shift away from your outcome goal (e.g., to move and react faster during games) to focusing on the training process (e.g., adding 10 minutes of quick feet and reaction drills before every practice session). Athletes who have the ability to let go of their “time” or outcome goals are usually the ones who achieve them.

If you think about it, success really depends on how effective we are in accomplishing a series of practice goals isn’t it? This requires consistent energy and focus and being constantly distracted by worries about not being able to achieve your end goal isn’t going to help.

What it means for skill development and competition…is to focus on the performance and mental cues (e.g., driving your legs, eyes on the ball, running into passing lanes) instead of the outcome (e.g., completing the practice session or winning the game).

You have probably experienced similar thoughts during competition – “I have to score in this game!” or “I’m two strokes down, this drive needs to be perfect.” Such thoughts often make you feel tensed or anxious. If you are a striker, you would probably be more hesitant to shoot, and if you are the golfer, you’d probably “over muscle” your swing.

This isn’t Just About Sport, its Life…

Observe these two former para-athletes who attended the IPC Intro to Para-Coaching Course below.

Would they be able to roll the ball if they focused on what they did NOT have?

When we learn how to focus on the process instead of the outcome, we are also learning one of the most common thinking routine associated with Resilience (i.e., the capacity to overcome challenges) – “Focus on what you CAN control instead of what you CAN’T…” What that means is that you can’t directly control the outcome, but you can give yourself the highest probability of success by focusing on the 50% that you can control, and use a 100% of this 50%!

So how can this approach or mindset help us to overcome challenges in our careers, relationships or any pursuits? As always, I would be delighted to hear from you!

Coach Hansen