Issue date
I have been facilitating a few coaches’ courses over the last couple of months,
Something that keeps coming up and that I believe is very important to being a successful coach is preseason planing, goal setting and creating the right learning environment.
Goal Setting
This is not something that is easy to do or facilitate well, the goals really need to come from the athlete, not you and the not athletes parents.
The athlete should set themselves some goals, and then you can help them put together a programme to achieve those goals.
Sounds easy, but how often is this done, and how often is it done well, I don’t think I have ever done it very well with any of the teams I have coached.
Understanding the difference between process and outcome goals is very important; this video is very good at explaining the difference.
As a coach you should help your athletes set process goals that will achieve their outcome goals
A good example could be your athlete has an outcome goal of finishing in the top 20 in the nationals, some process goals to achieve that could be, do a certain amount of training before the regatta, be able hike the whole beat or wall sit for 4 min, be in the front row every start.
If you athlete hits all there process goals they should achieve their outcome goal.
Creating the right environment
I think one of the biggest roles that you can have as a coach is to set up the right learning environment for your athletes or sailors. If you are a School Teams Racing coach this means making sure all the boats work and there are enough sailors to make to two even teams. If you are an optimist coach setting up a good committed training squad, getting your sailors to compete in enough regattas.
The Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron is regarded as one of the most successful training programmes in the world, producing far more Americas Cup and Volvo sailors than any other programme. There is one coach for the 40 athletes, and not a huge amount of on the water coaching, the focus of the programme and what they do extremely well is creating a great culture and environment for learning.
