My Background and The Expert Pedagogue

This week in our Sport Coaching Pedagogy lecture and tutorial, Keith (our lecturer), asked us all about our backgrounds, as to gain a better understanding of and past and present. I will share with you a little of my background.

As mentioned in my previous blog, I am halfway through a Bachelor of Sport Coaching and Exercise Science. I have an interest in all things sport and my hometown is Wagga Wagga the ‘city of good sports’ as we are rightly named with home-grown athletes such as Paul Kelly (AFL), Brad Kahlefeldt (triathlon) and Michael Slater (cricket) and just to name a few.

My sporting background mostly includes cycling. However, as a junior I did attempt Australian rules, cricket and rugby league (all of which I was not very good at!). Cycling was always the standout for me and in most recent times track cycling.

This week Keith challenged the group to think about influential coaches and figures throughout our sporting lives. I have felt privileged with the coaches that I have been surrounded my and that have always got the best out of me. Bob Robertson taught me love for the sport, Tom Dawson was a great mentor (and still is) and taught me how to work hard, Brian Simpson coached me to win bike races I didn’t know I could win and Alex Bird has taught me strength and skills and in leading by example that anything is possible.

I have coached (and am coaching) a masters track cyclist named Daniel. In my coaching I am aspiring the take the best attributes of all of my coaches and become (as Keith has called it) the expert pedagogue. I am also discovering what a challenge coaching can be sometimes. Although it is not without its victories; last weekend Daniel picked up the silver medal in the Australian Masters Track Championships in the sprint. After a couple of years working with him, the hard work has paid off.

“The coaching process is the contract/agreement between the athlete and coach and the operationalisation consists of the purposeful, direct and indirect, formal and informal series of activities and interventions designed to improve competition performance. The most evident part of the process is normally a planned, co-ordinated and integrated programme of preparation and competition.” – John Lyle (2002)

This quote for me really sums up what it is to be a coach and I have found that this holistically defines the daily duties of the pedagogue. The purpose of the coach is to improve performance and this quote by Lyle characterises what type of interventions a coach makes to achieve improved performance.