OOAK Table Tennis Forum

As a TT England UKCC level 1 qualified coach I'm required to complete at least 1 Continual Professional Development course each year to improve my coaching skills. At first I thought this was just a bind, but being inactive from playing for a long time I've started to research coaching processes, different styles and techniques. By this I mean generic coaching skills - not simply the mechanics of how to play a shot.

Here on the forum we often say that players would improve their game more if they practise, specifically with a coach. However, just how good is the standard of coaching that you receive?

To help you decide, I'm going to reference a paper by Richard Cox - Psychological considerations of effective coaching. It's from a book called "The Coaching Process: Principles and Practice." It's very err, academic but I think the following list is very helpful for anyone to assess if they are getting value for money from any coaching they receive (that can be the parents of players or the players themselves) and for coaches to assess their own performance.

If you don't recognise or experience any of these in your own coaching sessions, you may want to ask your coach why.

Excellent coaching sessions:

1. Are planned and published in advance of the session
2. Start and end on time
3. Keep athletes busy the whole time
4. Promote competition between friends
5. Include a lot of variety
6. Include behaviours required in competitions
7. Involve each athlete in goal-setting
8. Generate as much feedback to each athlete as possible
9. Are evaluated as soon afterwards as possible
10. Encourage interested family and friends to make a postive contribution.

I'll be honest, I'm starting to consider myself a coach rather than a helper but when I read through this list, I found it very sobering. Some I've done informally, some I regularly do and some I'd never considered doing. And, I can always find an excuse not to some of these as well (we never know who's going to turn up or what standard they are or what their asperations are, I'm a volunteer coach and not being paid, time etc) but are these really excuses or real reasons?

Maybe it's a time I took a real hard look at what I'm trying to help our league deliver to people?

Maybe it's time if you are paying for coaching that you challenge your coach about the standard of their sessions?

Very good! I hope you develop more and improve. We need a lot more good coaches!

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