If you are a committed coach in a relationship you are going to want to listen to this podcast. If you are the committed spouse or partner of a coach you are really going to want to listen to this podcast...

In this, the first in a two part series of EvelChat, Derek talks to Donna Kaye-Harris, lifelong coach, sport builder & researcher, on interviews she did with 10 Olympic coaches & their partners prior to the 2016 Rio Games. In part 1 we discuss the feedback from the data on the partners of coaches, in part 2 we discuss the data from the coaches themselves.

Donna interviewed each person in the cohort separately & independently, collecting feedback on how the coaching profession (obsession?) has impacted their partnership, family life, health and other important areas. While her findings are unpublished, her raw data, easily digestible & organized around quotes from both the coach & partner, can be viewed here.

This is a fascinating discussion on the impact coaching has on a marriage, partnership, relationship and family and should not be missed.

Donna Harris, ChPC, is a Chartered Professional Coach skilled in program development and implementation. She holds a Master of Arts in Kinesiology; her thesis explored the impact of passion on the performance and lives of elite coaches and their partners. The research outcomes lend insight into the requirements high performers need to be successful as well as the impact being a high performer has on the individual, their partner and their family.  The architect behind Athletics Canada’s revised coaching education program, she understands the components of performance and the steps necessary to draw out the best from everyone.

Topics:

• “They’re not quite present in family life”
• “Knowing that you’re second place”
• “I got to go, I went to Beijing, I went to Athens”
• “The coach’s career trumps my career”
• “You’re not really making a lot of the decisions that affect your life”
• “Worrying (about job security) doesn’t really help a whole lot”
• “It’s a job of passion, not a job you count hours”
• “. . .and then it consumes you”
• “Tell me a coach that was great and had good work-life balance”

In this episode of EvelChat Derek & Movement Expert & Skill Acquisition Coach Shawn Myszka discuss learning, teaching & technical development within the context of one of sport’s most complex movement challenges, the Hammer Throw.

Shawn has served primarily as a Personal Performance Advisor & Movement Skill Acquisition Coach for National Football League (NFL) players since 2008, working with approximately 12 players each year and has partnered with 5 NFL All-Pro selections and 12 NFL Pro Bowl Team members.

You can find Shawn’s full bio at https://emergentmvmt.com/about/

Shawn’s website: https://emergentmvmt.com  

You can find Shawn on Twitter at @movementmiyagi 

Topics:

• Coaching in northern environments & innovation
• Skill development in varying conditions
• Facilitating skill development as opposed to imparting a technical model (Ecological Dynamics)
• Unique technical and physical elements of the hammer throw
• Nikolai Bernstein’s ideas on problem solving
• The functional adaptive relationship between the athlete & performance
• Movement as a problem-solving process
• Drills vs. whole movement learning
• A coach’s place in the learning process
• Global movements & coaching beginners
• Creating dexterity & “Bulletproofness” in technical development
• The line between fostering individual problem-solving solutions & facilitating ineffective technique
• Barry Sanders & chasing technical models
• “Adaptability Zone” & the confluence of constraints
• Considering Emergence in movement learning
• Global vs. Part learning with beginners
• Ego and coaching technical models
• Authenticity & problem solving “on the fly”
• Creating / exposing athletes to different environments
• The line between ‘thinking’ & moving instinctively.
• One-on-one coaching & over-coaching 

In this 2nd of back-to-back episodes of EvelChat with our buddy Stu McMillan, Derek & Stu discuss learning & skill acquisition.

Topics include:

• Stu’s a “People Person”
• Skill stability & the edges of the technical bandwidth 
• Performance vs. learning sessions
• Variability & the range of accepted movement within a technical model
• The “problem in the hammer throw” 
• Technique vs. Skill 
• Development coaching vs. Elite coaching
• The content vs. the context of a movement
• Removing context to help an athlete learn more
• Challenging athletes to move more effectively
• Prescription vs. facilitation
• Changing an athlete’s technical model
• Guiding the athlete to solve their own technical solutions.