Introduction

In this session, you will examine how coaching styles and practice sessions might be changing. The coach is the person who designs practice sessions, and they play a key role in creating imaginative situations in which their athletes can learn and refine technical, psychological and tactical skills.

You will start by hearing from leading coaches describing their work at both a club level and an international level. Both scenarios question the use of repetitive drills and you will find out why. You continue by exploring practice principles developed by Bailey (2014a) who, with some humour, called them ‘coaching commandments’.

Watch the following video featuring Alex Danson.

By the end of this session, you should be able to:

• describe some outline features of ‘how’ coaches might run sessions that help people learn
• recognise the role of creativity in providing quality practices
• appreciate how principles based on the science of learning and teaching have an important place in influencing coaching, teaching and instruction in sport.