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Organising and Planning

Using Technology to Enhance Your Coaching

If you haven’t yet thought about utilising technology in your coaching sessions, then you may be missing out on a key strategy to help your participants develop. Mike Dale asked five coaches to explain how simple, accessible digital tools have enhanced their practice

If you don’t use technology in your coaching, what’s stopping you? Perhaps you’re ‘old school’ and sceptical of anything more complicated than a stopwatch? Or maybe you’re already so overworked that there aren’t enough hours in the week to spend mucking about with apps? Whatever your reason, finding the time or the opportunity to upskill in this area may prove key to a better coaching experience.

If (as is likely) they were born after 1980, your athletes are ‘digital natives’. That is, they have been immersed in technology all their adult lives and don’t remember a time when they couldn’t Google an answer to any question within 30 seconds.

This generation don’t dabble in technology. It’s their life. They’re always connected; communicating, sharing and demanding instant information and feedback. They find it annoying when it isn’t there.

UK Coaching research shows participants are frustrated if their coach doesn’t use digital tools such as video feedback, via an iPad or digital camera, to analyse technique and strategy. “I just don’t get why we don’t do that,” said one young rugby player.

And young golfers, for example, are less likely to passively accept the coach’s observation that their club head is in the wrong position at the top of their backswing. They want to see the proof. Now.

What about coaches who simply ‘don’t have time?’

Fear not: an array of time-saving solutions may be just the touch of a button away.

Image of a set of apps on a phone, of which the App Store is central

Click into the tabs below to find out how coaches across a range of sports have utilised technology to improve their sessions and enhance their coaching.

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