Gabriel Sylla

Problem solving-1

 

Within the NCCP CORE competencies PROBLEM SOLVING is in my book, the most complexe yet the most challenging one.

In our daily lives as coaches we face challenges to help athletes to improve in training and eventually in competition.It’s a never ending quest!

I work with national team athletes to help improve their strength and conditioning and some of them on their Technical and tactical skills. So within my context PROBLEM SOLVING is critical to help them improve all the time and reach their full potential.

After a few weeks of reflecting on the gap analysis class with Dr Van Nutegem and the directed field of studies in sports class with professor Dave Hill, i came to realize that my problem solving methods were inconsistent, most of the time effective but i never understood why, so i could build a model for future reference.

Here is my new personal approach to problem solving:

-Step 1: Ask yourself the following question, WHAT is the problem?

-Step 2: Collect Facts, Images or Data

-Step 3: Ask the question WHY is this happening? – Cause analysis

-Step 4:  Solution Planing

-Step 5: Implementation

-Step 6: Evaluation of effectiveness

-Step 7: If step 6 is good than we standardise

-Step 8: Draw conclusions on the process and the lessons we learned

 

Here is a current problem i’m trying to find solutions on:

Like many contact sports Karate is a quick decision making sport
As a coach i’m always trying to find efficient and fun ways train this
Ability, which involves also AGIlITY:
Agility is a quick total body change of speed and direction movement in reaction to a stimulus at lest that is how i see it now. As before i used to train and test athletes doing the classic T Test, and different latter drills.
But i noticed that those drills didn’t effectively transpose themselves in the real competition context, because they lacked the cognitive aspect.They just change of direction drills with a pattern that was known in advance!
In this video, you will see how i found ways to overcome this problem, but i’m still looking for ways to Test Agility with the decision making aspect.

Through  the HPCTL program and also The CSI in Montreal i have been blessed to being exposed to new coaching concepts bring my attention to this ability and to reflect and analyse it so i could improve my coaching effectiveness .

Please share what you do in your sport to train and test these abilities.
Thank you
Gabriel

 

Here is an exemple of the solutions i found to train these abilities

i ‘m now trying to find a solution to mesure and track them effectively

 

References:

Shoji Shiba and David Walden  Quality process improvement Tools and Technics, revision 6;7/30/2002

 

 

 

PROBLEM SOLVING THEAM-2

31/03/17
In my last blog about the subject i put up the picture below, showing where i stood in this NCCP competency compared to my peers at the beginning of our program and the area i where i was most behind the class average was : “takes responsibility for improvements or problem solving.”

I took it upon myself to improve in this area to become a better coach, during my studies at UBC i came to realize that in my coaching career i was always behind someone who took all the big responsabilities and a person who had all the pressure. I was always the”assistant” , always in a supporting role! I was shy to put up my own ideas upfront for improving the athletes.

Early in my career my assumption was: the head coach makes all the final decisions, that is his role, he should know all the answers, he should delegate tasks and break things down, not delegate responsibilities or keep us (assistants) accountable.

“Leaders venture out none of the individuals in our study sat idly by waiting for faith to smile upon them”

“Those who led others to greatness seek and accept challenges”

When i graduated from the Canadian Sport Institute in Montreal, i started to have a different mindset, and started to evolve as a coach and a leader. The UBC program inspired me to take on more responsibilities to improve athletes, i decided 6 months ago to step outside my comfort zone and open my own dojo to create a competition team. I could not hide behind anybody, this was my project.

Since we became an Olympic sport more and more traditional karate athletes are making the transition to “sport karate”, once i declared that i wanted to start my own competition team, the word got around and i started to have athletes wanting to make the transition come to me. I did not solicitate anyone because that causes problems with other teachers and coaches. Most of them keep a traditional base with their original “dojos” and come to me for sport karate.

I immediately started a problem solving culture and a continuous improvement culture, getting athletes, to think for themselves. In my problem solving quest in training, i started to explore more deliberate practice and I also made them understand that fighting is a constant problem solving game and that led me to add cognitive dimension to my coaching. Instead of telling them what to do all the time, i put them in situations that make them understand The “why” and let them figure out the “how” and i wanted to have them concentrate more in practice. I started to design challenging practices to improve performance.

Despite repetition, most people fail to become experts at what they do. It doesn’t matter how many years they spend they stop getting better. Experience does not equate to expertise.( Atul Gawande 2002)

i had an athlete who had trouble creating openings to score, so i filmed him and reviewed the film with him and asked him why he had trouble scoring. He figured out by himself that he wasn’t creating any deterrences or faints, he was coming in too directly and his intentions were too obvious to his opponent. He had a big smile on his face, and the next practice i told him to choose 3 different attack technics and he had to find tree different ways to score for each attacks. It took a while but he found by himself 9 effective strategies. The next steps was, the testing, so i had him spare in practice without telling his teammate what i was looking for, and he passed the test.

By viewing expert per- formers not simply as domain-specific experts but as experts in maintaining high levels of practice and improving perfor- mance, we are likely to uncover valuable information about the optimal conditions for learning and education. (K. Anders Ericsson 1993)

A few weeks later we had a minor competition, a perfect setting to put him to the test, and he finished 2 nd and scored a lot of points in his matches. I learned a lot as a coach in this experience and improved his offensive repertoire dramatically!

References

K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer (1993) The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance

JM. Kouze and BS.Posner (2006) leadership challenge

Farnam Street News letter Susan Cain (2002)What is Deliberate Practice?