Over the last month I have researched some different studies for both of our current courses in research methods and the psychology of leadership.
I have also started working with the university women varsity cross country program which you can read all about in an earlier blog called “Running with the AXEwomen”.
When I first started in this program I felt I had a good understanding of what high performance coaching looks like and what a good program looks like. Over the last year I realized that there are definitely many different ways of leading a program and there are different styles of leadership and program success cannot always be measured purely by the performance of the athletes.
I think one of the biggest “aha moments” I had in our research methods class was when our teacher taught us the concept of the null hypothesis.
“The null hypothesis is a general statement or default position that there is no relationship between two measured phenomena, or no association among groups.[1] Testing (accepting, approving, rejecting, or disproving) the null hypothesis—and thus concluding that there are or are not grounds for believing that there is a relationship between two phenomena (e.g. that a potential treatment has a measurable effect)—is a central task in the modern practice of science; the field of statistics gives precise criteria for rejecting a null hypothesis”
When I apply this theory into the coaching world to see if a program produced the outcome for a certain athlete we cannot say with confidence that it was due to the actions of the coach unless it was tested against a control group. In other words, there is no scientific reason to believe that there was a relationship between the program and the outcome unless it was tested against a random sample control group.
In our daily coaching environment, we often assume that because a program produced good results the coaching also must be good. I’m sure there must be some relationship but often it also comes down to what population base the coach is working with and what the previous history of the program was like. If a program was already successful it will attract more successful recruits and that reinforces the strength of the program. In other words, a coach can never say with full confidence that his or her program is strong because of their coaching unless the athletes were assigned in a random sample order and a control group was run at the same time to compare against the null hypothesis.
This revelation will help me in choosing a thesis topic so that it will make true impact on the development of my own coaching practice and environment.
One common theme that keeps on coming up is the concept of transformational coaching and creating a task oriented supportive training environment. As mentioned earlier I had the chance to work with the Acadia Varsity Cross Country team and it gave me a really good chance to look at a program without actually being the head coach in that program. It gave me perspective and I quickly started to understand how being in a consultant role can be beneficial for the program. Although I don’t really like the term of High Performance Consultant or Advisor it does make sense if the coach is willing to reach out and willing to accept feedback and make necessary adjustments.
In my case I was very fortunate to work with a coach who is very open and willing on brining on change and making sure he improves on his coaching practice. Having a growth mind set and being open minded for new ideas is an important building block to create a task oriented supportive training environment.
At the beginning of this term I was pretty sure I was going to do a wheelchair study exploring the relationship between the 400m and 800m for T53 male wheelchair racers and I might still go down this path. However, as I start thinking more about potential topics I’m being pulled more towards coach interventions and applied sport psychology within the varsity program environment. In any ways, I’m following my passion of high performance coaching either within Para or Varsity and it will not matter what I decide in the end as long as I can make sure I get appropriate subjects and feasible data collection.
The goal for me is to learn how to do research and if I can increase my network of coaches and academics along the way that will be an added bonus.
Coach Ueli
Hi Ueli,
Nice post, it was great to see you bring in different elements of both courses we are currently taking. Great to see you are starting to plan and explore areas of research you are clearly passionate about!!
Ueli, great reflection and relationship to the coaching. I think that some of the elements you have discussed is why it is so hard to understand what is good or effective coaching. There are so many factors that impact performance and the coach is only one part of the equation. Scientists love to study sport because it in many ways it has an objective measure of performance. However, depending on the measure used, it is likely more impacted by the individual or team who is directly involved in the performance. The challenge in coaching is finding a measure that is solely dependent on the coach’s performance. In any domain there will be some contamination of interdependency in which other factors may cause the performance. For example, a good sales manager may have great performance in sales, but this could be also be affected by factors like the product, promotions, demographic of customer, economy, ete. Hence it is difficult to fully determine if sales performance is attributed to the actual interventions of the sales manager. In coaching, the challenge is finding the ideal measure of coaching performance. I have often thought that good coaches are the ones who have greater consistency of “performance” (i.e. examining variability within data) as opposed to the “magnitude” of performance (average or median measures). That said the coach that is able to maintain a high magnitude of performance over time may likely be the better coach…. But then again, consider type II error, wherein a coaches success over shadows the graveyard of athletes who were destroyed in the process. So perhaps another way to look at it is…
Good Coaching = (# of athlete successes – # of athlete failures) / total athletes coached
Thoughts??
That’s a great point. Your last comment about looking at how many athletes don’t succeed in the program is something I definitely observed while training in Kenya. We know that the Kenyans are some of the best runners in the world. When I was there in early 2000 I immersed myself in the training environment with a Kenyan Training Group and experienced how the coach would just prescribe the same workout to 50 guys and see who responded the best. Kenya as a country has the luxury of just burning talents and see who survives. Of course not a very ethical approach but they have a culture of running so many people are willing to give it their all and take the chance. I think recently coaches are using more evidence based training methods and also a more individual approach especially once they have a achieved a level of success. Interestingly the athlete that had the most success in the group was also the “laziest” athlete. He often did not show up for practice and the coach got frustrated with him at times but could not kick him of the team because he was a multiple Olympic Champion and he needed him for his groups reputation and sponsorships. Early in my coaching career I got trapped in compromising on my coaching physlosphy in order to keep a high performing athlete on the team although they did not have the work ethics I was asking from the others. I realized though that this can be bad for the team spirit and now have the confidence to part with an athlete if they don’t buy into the program. This in return meant that the consistency of my team was much better and on average I’m putting more athletes on national teams.
Hey Ueli,
When reading your post, Urban Myer immediately popped into my head. I would say that from starting at Bowling Green Univ. (he put them on the map) too, until today at Ohio state Univ. he has success with all programs he has been affiliated with because of his coaching. Now, the type II error might be that a handful of his players have had domestic abuse charges, been to jail, or has a criminal past outside of football but he has a history of looking the other way, case and point, Aaron Hernandez when coaching at Florida or the reality that he is about to retire for the 3rd time.
Towards the end, you touched on how being a consultant changed your perspective and how that could be beneficial to the program. I wanted to ask, being dethatched from the head coach position in cross country, did this change your perspective with how you coach WC racing?
Dave used the analogy of a sales manager and how it’s difficult to isolate one factor that could explain performance of sales manager or if the intervention contributed to it. I agree that would be a daunting task to explore but on a simpler note, I think you can take steps to improve performance without diving into research on it.
In the military, there is a phrase “cover and move” which means, one person shoots while the other moves to a tactically (usually higher ground) better position and then they start shooting while the first shooter moves to a better position. Eventually, they would be able to take down the enemy because of their position. To relates this back to Dave’s analogy, maybe the sales manager didn’t move all the units that the manufacturer made and that would be a failure. Maybe the manufacture made faulty product and the sales manager doesn’t have units to move and that would be a failure. Maybe the manufacturer made perfect product but the sales manager can’t move all the units, that too, would be a failure. All these different departments in business must work together (cover and move) to achieve success. In your context, athlete and coach must work together to achieve success.
Overall, I enjoyed your post and look forward to seeing where your research takes you!
Albie