Andrew Gillott describes himself as a Coach Developer. I would describe him as a genius learning architect. Andrew has been instrumental in leading and creating opportunities for coaches to learn and develop and his passion for learning and development has meant that he has led some of the most innovative and creative programmes of development for coaches up and down the UK talent system.
In this conversation we explore the inevitable 'drills v games' debate, how he uses an ecological approach to help coaches to appreciate their effect on athletes and why context is important when understanding the behaviour of coaches.
Hope you enjoy
Dr Amanda Visek is a researcher from George Washington University in the U.S as well as being an active sports coach and someone who is passionate about the role that sport can play to improve children's lives. Her research provides a fascinating look into what makes sport fun for children and the results will surprise you.
In this super interesting conversation we delve into the way that she gathered the information and then used 'concept mapping' techniques to provide a visual reference as to the key elements of fun for children. She then shares some of her latest unpublished research that compares how parents and coaches rank certain elements and how this is not necessarily aligned to the way children rank things!!
The research can be found here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4201634/
A presentation on the fun maps with visuals can be found here https://appliedsportpsych.org/site/assets/files/14874/visek.pdf
I hope you enjoy the conversation
Scott McNeill is a Performance Coach Developer for GB Hockey, a Performance Director for the Canoe Association of Northern Ireland as well as a mentor for the Premier League.
He has been part of a group of people that have led a transformation within GB Field Hockey to redevelop the player development system in line with the principles of Ecological Dynamics.
In this fascinating conversation, Scott describes the journey of bringing about this change within the sport and some of the key pillars of embedding these concepts and ideas into the psyche of the playing and coaching community.
While this discussion explores how this is done on a whole sport scale, the ideas and approaches that are shared by Scott apply to anybody looking to foster a player centred environment which allows players to thrive and develop.
Even though I have been on this journey with Scott and his colleagues as a coach and coach developer, I still found the conversation fascinating and insightful. I know you will too!!
Enjoy!!
This Podcast is brought to you by a great new book called 'Conversations for the Journey - 40 ways to build sporting character' by Richard Shorter from www.non-perfectdad.co.uk. It is a great book packed full of useful ideas and questions to engage the young sports athlete. It is great to parents but also great for coaches (a proper stocking filler!)
Subscribers to The Talent Equation can get a special 10% discount if they click on this link