Coaches Should Develop the Whole Person
Article by Nick Levett
Holistic coaching models support the development of the whole person, not just their physical abilities. Developing the whole person provides an opportunity to help people work on their life skills, and is what coaching is all about
This article should only be one sentence long, really, because the importance of holistic development can be summed up in eight words. These are: because it is the right thing to do.
Here’s the reason why.
Regardless of the level you may be coaching, whether you work with new players to a sport or at a high-performance level, developing the whole person is what coaching is about.
In fact, it is probably impossible to do a coaching session that solely focuses on technical development alone. Inevitably there will be some level of thinking going on by the participant, some degree of engaging with other people (the coach or the team) and normally, elements of physical movement.
However, the most important thing is that ultimately, we use sport as a vehicle to develop human behaviour and we are wonderfully lucky that we can do such a thing. We encourage young people to develop a lifelong love of sport and physical activity and, regardless of the level of performance they achieve, they will be citizens of this country.
Sport as a vehicle to develop human behaviour
When you look at the statistics of those playing sport that go on to do so at a high-performance level it will be less than 1%. Crucially, however, 99.9% will have jobs in some form or another, engage with other people in communities, be a family member to others and sometimes be responsible for bringing up other people.
The skills to do this, such as confidence; comradeship; conflict resolution; decision-making, strategic thinking and many more, can all be fostered and nurtured through sport and physical activity environments. There are no guarantees these translate to ‘daily life’ but it certainly gives you a better chance if they can!
Turning a lens on the talent pathway, the one thing that will unite everyone that is part of that system is disappointment.
That may come in the form of:
- dealing with injury
- being dropped from a team
- being substituted for a big game
- having to retire
- being released from the system.
How a person deals with that is an important life skill because those moments happen all the time. They may come in the form of not getting the job you want after an interview went well, dealing with an illness or long-term condition, or even a relationship breaking down. It's part of life.
Developing life skills
Your coaching sessions can present an opportunity to develop important skills beyond just the technical and tactical. They can be weaved subtly into practices.
Look at the following questions, and spend five minutes noting your answers down in a journal or notebook:
What do you consider key life skills to be?
How does your sport lend itself to developing these?
For example, it’s clear that communication skills are important in sport and life. The ability to interact with other people, to listen and respond is crucial in any walk of life. So how can we use sport to develop these?
Example: basketball
Let’s take basketball as an example, but this will work for many different sports.
You could set up a practice that had several games of 1v1 going on at the same time (e.g. A1 v B1, A2 v B2 towards one hoop). Other players then run across each other, providing lots of interference. This offers greater decision-making benefits and bonus agility practice. Players get loads of touches of the ball, and get to practise their dribbling, shooting and defending, as well as other game-related outcomes.
After 4 minutes, stop the practice and this is where the magic happens. The next game will be A1 v B2 and A2 v B1 but before the game starts, A1 and A2 come together, and B1 and B2 meet up away from the other pair, to discuss what they learned from playing against their opponent from the first game, share what the opponent was good at and how they tried to counter this, and what they tried that was successful to provide some insight to the person that is playing them next.
The importance of holistic development
It’s a good idea to pay attention to:
- what your players are talking about
- what details they are picking up about their opponents that are useful to share
- how observant they are about their strengths and weaknesses
- how well they can articulate or explain what they’re noticing.
These are all useful things to identify because come game-day, they are going to have to make these assessments about direct opposition in order to solve technical and tactical problems. The multiple returns from setting up the practice this way means the players develop their communication skills, often a skill that they need during games but ultimately one that will help them in life.
Holistic development through sport is essential and we cannot underestimate the importance of this process. As coaches, it can be easy to get bogged down in the technical and tactical elements but it’s imperative we see the whole person, beyond that of just being an athlete. We need to connect with them as an individual too.
In many cases, coaches are not the only people involved in helping to develop an athlete. There may be several other people influencing their development including sports science support; physical preparation coaches; psychologists and others. It will be important to share these thoughts with them, so they work from a similar philosophy.
In his book on New Zealand rugby union, Legacy, James Kerr summed this up nicely when he said: “Better people make better All Blacks.” This is an important message that we can all adapt to serve our own coaching experiences.
Holistic Coaching: Developing Skills for Life
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