Coaches and parachutes
Coaches and parachutes
A coach's mind is like a parachute, it works best when it's open.
By Jim Dickin
The very best coaches describe themselves as always learning. They ensure the same ethos in their players - one of constant improvement.
However, keeping up with new developments in your sport is often difficult and even ten years ago coaches often innovated in isolation.
Now, social networks and YouTube give access to the very best professional development resources and are a potential gold mine for every coach.
The Web is the place to learn new techniques and watch top coaches coaching. The chance to see professional coaches in action is particularly invaluable for any sport.
YouTube
My YouTube search below was for a very generic sports coaching session. As coaches, we can learn from all sports and certainly, I have drawn from American football in my rugby coaching.
We can also be more specific in our searching:
Twitter is another massive source of coach education, with some outstanding resources. On the other hand, it's massive flow of information available can make Twitter seem unwieldy, and there are only so many selfies and pictures of peoples meals that you can take.
The answer to this problem though is to be very judicious about who you follow and do not be afraid to unfollow people. Twitter is as easy as following the sign up instructions at twitter.com.
I have recommended below a list of some excellent people to follow on twitter.
- @tech4coaching Obviously I'm a little biased ... but I do try to highlight innovative coaching resources that I find on Twitter.
- @thevideoanalyst Some excellent insights into video analysis, with job opportunities/internships and interviews from current analysts.
- @matttoulson New Zealand manager for Sportstec, often shares innovative performance analysis.
- @Ubersense Sharing innovative coaching from around the world.
- @VXSport New Zealand company specialising in individual athlete monitoring. Some great stats from many different sports.
- @uppy01 Very thought-provoking twitter feed with insights into top level sport and coaching.
- @SportNZ Up-to-the-minute research and careers in sport from Sport New Zealand.
- @jattaylor Outstanding collection of web resources published each week. This is a must for outstanding coaching information.
- @B1ackie Mentor to Johny Wilkinson, an outstanding coach with experience in professional football and rugby - a really thought-provoking twitter feed and well worth following.
Pocket is an app for all platforms which allows you to save the good bits of your Twitter feed into a central place. It's like making a magazine for yourself containing just the articles that you want to read.
As you flick through your feed and spot an article that you would like to read later, you simply press the "read later" button to add the article to "pocket". When you've time to review your saved articles, you can read them all in one place. Check out getpocket.com or install it on your devices via the app store etc.
My drive is very much that coaches educate themselves and become better coaches for their athletes by their personal ongoing development. I believe that Twitter and the other resources I have discussed here are tools which can help this process.
I look forward to you getting in contact on the addresses below either via twitter or email and letting me know of other twitter feeds I should be featuring - I am sure there are some undiscovered diamonds out there.
Jim Dickin
