Informed Coach, Informed Leader, Informed Practitioner
Paul Gamble
Crimes Against Critical Thinking in the Face of ...

As the saying goes ‘never let the truth get in the way of a good story’. But it truly is quite remarkable how readily we will override our capacity for critical thinking in the face of a story we want to hear. As we will see, if the message on offer appeals enough to a particular desire or bias, it appears we will happily overlook whatever shortcomings in methodology and inconvenient flaws in logic are apparent. In this way, we can be active participants in ‘group think’.

We might then question our roles in upholding the conventions that abound in performance sport. Upon closer inspection, there is rarely logic in convention. It is beguilingly easy to fall prey to participating in such group delusion. On some level, we could argue that we willingly enter into this to prop up a particular tenet of our belief system in relation to theory and practice.

Crimes Against Critical Thinking in the Face of a Good Story
Informed Coach, Informed Sport Parent, Informed Leader
Paul Gamble
Uniting Participation and Performance

There is a strange insistence that participation and performance are entirely distinct and never the twain shall meet. But is there really no common ground to be found here? I will argue that participation and performance are NOT in fact mutually exclusive - especially in the case of youth sport. There is in fact plenty of overlap. So why should we keep them apart? Is it possible that bringing participation and performance back under the same roof might provide benefits in both directions?

Uniting Participation and Performance
Informed Leader, Informed Practitioner, Informed Coach
Paul Gamble
The Tyranny of Safeguarding in Sport

A provocative title, so allow me to specify at the outset what exactly I am highlighting and the limits of the argument. Firstly and most importantly, let me make it clear that I am excluding from the discussion the necessary and vitally important domain of child-protection and the protection of vulnerable adults under law. What I am specifically referring to is the concept creep that has seen the safeguarding approach extended to sportsmen and women at senior level, who are otherwise (in the eyes of the law) deemed responsible adults capable of providing informed consent, making decisions and advocating on their own behalf. I am also excluding clear cases of misconduct that unamibiguously violate professional ethics and the boundaries of the athlete-coach relationship - for instance, sexually inappropriate behaviour or physical abuse. What I am also highlighting is the mission creep of those charged with investigating such claims and the present danger of over-reach. Why I feel these trends need to be challenged is that the safeguarding system if left unchecked threatens to penalise coaches simply for carrying out their proper duties.

The Tyranny of Safeguarding in Sport
Paul Gamble
Special Post: Choosing the Right Programme

EDITOR’S NOTE:

To celebrate the imminent release of the new title ‘Sports Parenting: Negotiating the Challenges of the Youth Sports Journey to Help Kids Thrive’ we are sharing this special post. The excerpt featured is from the chapter ‘Choosing the Right Programme’.

Environment is everything when it comes to developing talent. Parents are naturally highly motivated to find the programme that provides most optimal conditions to allow their child’s talents to flourish. Seeing past the sales pitch and making the right choice is however not a straightforward proposition. Being successful on this endeavour begins with understanding the key features that make for the most conducive setting to enable young performers to realise their athletic potential. In this chapter we aim to provide parents with some criteria to guide the search.

Special Post: Choosing the Right Programme
Informed Coach, Informed Leader, Informed Practitioner
Paul Gamble
Ingredients for Progress: Heretics and Dissent

The inclination to question is not common - looking back, most of us would admit that we uncritically accepted what we were taught. There is a general assumption that authority figures know what they are doing, so it may not necessarily occur to us that the consensus view that is espoused might be flawed or even untrue. Yet it is always worth allowing for the possibility that the prevailing view may not necessarily have a sound basis or at least might be missing something important. It might serve us well to consciously foster in ourselves and others a readiness to challenge preconceived ideas and the received wisdom, simply in the interests of our own enlightenment. More broadly, it merits highlighting that willingness to question and to offer competing ideas are necessary ingredients for progress. Clearly this has some important implications for leaders and organisations, as well as for the professions and fields of study that we are part of.

Ingredients for Progress: Heretics and Dissent

Adaptability

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Tempering Athletes: Future Proofing Versus Acquired Fragility

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Tempering Athletes: Future Proofing Versus Acquired Fragility

Tempering is a process used to impart strength and toughness, and essentially serves to bring out the intrinsic properties of the material under stress. Athletes forged in the crucible of severely testing conditions may be similarly rendered highly resilient to future challenges and stressors. Those who successfully come through such trial by fire paradoxically often prove stronger from the experience. The notion that stressors can not only make systems more resilient, but in fact stronger and better as a consequence, speaks to the concept of antifragility, a phenomenon observed in nature and highlighted by Nassim Taleb who famously coined the term. In this post, we will bring this antifragility lens, and a general reticence to accept that sports injuries ‘just happen’, to reframe how we think about preparing athletes to ‘future proof’ them to risks and scenarios that we cannot fully anticipate. In place of safeguarding measures and interventions that seek to protect, we will make the argument for tempering athletes to harness and develop their intrinsic reserves and coping abilities. Adopting this perspective and general strategy for managing injury risk, we will outline some tactics to help guide practitioners in their approach.

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Emotional Aptitude in Athlete Preparation

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Emotional Aptitude in Athlete Preparation

Emotion has traditionally been viewed as something to be suppressed. The logic goes that as leaders and people in positions of authority we should be detached and act ‘without emotion’. If somebody is described as ‘emotional’ generally this is construed as a bad thing; when we become ‘emotional’ the implication is that we are no longer being rational or we are not capable of reason. Conventional wisdom advocates we avoid an emotional response or making emotional decisions. In contrast to these established views, more recent study in this area demonstrates that emotion is in fact integral to reasoning, decision making, guiding our behaviour, and our ability to relate to others. Emotional intelligence is accordingly becoming recognised as being at least as important as more established forms of intelligence. Indeed we increasingly hear commentators proclaim that ‘EQ trumps IQ’. In this latest Informed Blog we delve into the role of emotion in coaching and our work with athletes, and explore what aptitudes we need to possess in this area as leaders, coaches, and practitioners.

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Fostering Diversity of Thinking

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Fostering Diversity of Thinking

Divergence of opinion has traditionally been viewed in less than positive terms: when x and y don’t see eye to eye on a particular subject, this is generally seen as problematic. By extension, we hear of the virtues of assembling a group of ‘like-minded’ individuals. Organisations typically promote compromise and conformity as virtues to foster harmony and unity within the group. Contrary to this, the wisdom of crowds illustrates the benefits of aggregating judgements from a broad and disparate group of individuals. To further strengthen the case for diversity of thought and experience, ‘cognitive diversity’ is in fact found to be the major factor that differentiates successful teams and organisations. In this Informed Blog, we explore the paradoxical ways diversity and divergence are conceptualised, and see what lessons we can take on a group and an individual level in the context of sport.

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Traits of Elite Coaches and High Performing Practitioners

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Traits of Elite Coaches and High Performing Practitioners

In this latest offering we explore some of the traits that differentiate the best coaches and practitioners in their fields. One disclaimer before we start is that this post is based on observational study. To some degree the themes we explore reflect wisdom shared by prominent individuals via different forums and media. However, I unapologetically give more weight to traits and behaviours that I have directly observed. I have been fortunate to interact with a representative sample of these exceptional individuals across multiple sports in various contexts; this has provided the opportunity to see how they approach their work with ‘live’ athletes in different scenarios, as opposed to how individuals claim they act and operate in practice. The themes we explore are therefore more a product of this direct observation, rather than simply distilling what has been presented elsewhere.

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Informed Shorts: Making New and Better Mistakes

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Informed Shorts: Making New and Better Mistakes

As the saying goes, there is no success without struggle. The fear of making mistakes can become disabling, particularly if our aim is to try something new or different. So perhaps we need to to reframe how we think about making errors to avoid being too constrained by the desire to not get it wrong. The quest to be creative and innovative in our problem solving necessitates having the freedom to try new and different things. This principle applies whether we are seeking to explore new questions, or find different solutions to existing questions.

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The Why, What, and How of Coaching Movement: Part 3

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The Why, What, and How of Coaching Movement: Part 3

The current post is the culmination of a three-part series on coaching athletic movement. In the opening part of the series, we delved into the ‘why’, and sought to elucidate what roles we have to play in this space. With part two we got into the ‘what’, and proposed that the lenses of mechanical effectiveness and efficiency might unite our aims in both performance and injury realms. With this final instalment, we get into the ‘how’, and provide some practical guidance on how we might deliver what we outlined in part two, and ultimately fulfill the roles we identified in part one.

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The Why, What, and How of Coaching Movement: Part 2

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The Why, What, and How of Coaching Movement: Part 2

As practitioners we are all essentially coaches, and in our various realms we find ourselves directing athletes on how we want them to move. In the first part of this 3-part post we delved into the why, as we attempted to elucidate what roles we should play, and define what objectives we should be seeking to fulfil when providing instruction to athletes. With this second part on coaching movement we get into the 'what'.

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The Why, What, and How of Coaching Movement: Part 1

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The Why, What, and How of Coaching Movement: Part 1

In an early post entitled ‘The Rise of the Movement Specialist’ we identified an apparent gap in the technical input and direction provided to athletes when it comes to athletic movement skills. The appearance in recent times of hordes of self-styled ‘movement specialists’ seeking to fill the void, or rather recognising a niche in the market, is indicative that something is presently lacking. With this 3-part post we attempt to tackle the question of what our role is in this space, and offer some guidance on how we can do better.

In this first part of the 3-part series, we start with ‘why’…

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Perils of Binary Thinking and Polarised Debates

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Perils of Binary Thinking and Polarised Debates

For a practitioner who spends any time on social media it is easy to get the sense we are in the death throes of informed debate. Authorities (often self-proclaimed) seem to constantly spew forth evangelical proclamations, push their ideology and promote others who espouse their doctrine, and decry those who express contrary views. Sadly, it appears there are no shortage of young zealots eager to answer the call to join the modern crusades conducted on a social media battlefield. In this post we will explore the trend for binary thinking and polarised arguments that fuels the tribalism we see on these platforms, and how this is increasingly creeping into sports science and medicine circles. We will then attempt to plot a path back from the edge of the abyss, and bridge the divide between factions to allow us to return to real debate.

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Rejecting the Industry

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Rejecting the Industry

Practitioners across different domains will be familiar with their field of practice being referred to as an 'industry'. We frequently hear mention of the strength and conditioning industry, the sports physiotherapy industry, even the sports coaching industry. In this post we consider these trends for terming our professions in this way, and explore why an 'industry approach' might be problematic. From these discussions we can attempt to plot a path back to cultivating our craft, and restoring pride in our chosen profession by rejecting this ‘industry’ mindset.