I often think back to coaches I knew when I was a kid – the best ones were the ones who taught me lessons about myself, about life and as bonus about the sport I was playing. I think lots of people have similar stories to tell about their own coaches. So, the way I see it is we are just carrying on the great work of those who have gone before us.

WG

Just re read this one, fantastic article and got goose bumps reading it, very inspiring even the 2nd or 3rd read.

It really is about passion for what you do and it applies equally to the athlete, the administrator, the street sweeper, what ever you do, if you want to do it as well as you can, you have to be passionate about, it has to be “you”, what you are are not what you do as you so accurately stated.

I am back in town again now so let me know if you are up this way again soon.

Cheers
Richard

Agree with you. I don’t think we really find great athletes – they find us.

Particularly now, with the way Gen Y and Gen I think, coaching is more about engaging their hearts and minds and releasing their unique potential, more than “shaping it and moulding it” as we did in the “old days”. Coaching these days is very much about achieving more with less.

Thanks,

WG

Always good to read your stuff … the observation I have is that most of these qualities would seem to also apply to champion athletes (with perhaps communication being the only one that might need some qualification). Great coaches and athletes are, I suppose, unique, or at least rare, by definition, and so I wonder how many can be produced, if any, by a system, programme, process that may be geared more towards reproducing a standard rathering than setting one. I suspect these unique individuals arrive on our doorstep (if we are lucky) reasonably well formed, or evolved, already, at least in the qualities you have highlighted – Family of Origin and all that – and that perhaps the best we can do, aside from techncial tinkering, is get out of the way. Great athletes and coaches (and artists, musicians, scientists, etc) will I believe find their own way to be great, and its unlikely to be reproducible.

Which begs the question, what can be influenced, how, and by how much after the Family of Origin has done its darndest?

I really like this one, well done.

Regards

Brian