How to Develop as a Great Coach: Scientific Knowledge
C. Harmon Brown wrote:
The scientific basis of modern athletic coaching and training is often overlooked or taken for granted. Many believe that coaching is primarily an art, involving understanding of athlete-coach inter-relationships in order to impart information, and the ability to teach skills.
However, the educational background for modern qualified coaches world-wide involves a university or sports school curriculum which is soundly based in the sciences: anatomy, physiology, kinesiology, biomechanics, psychology, nutrition, and pedagogy (skills teaching).
This knowledge base provides the coach with a solid foundation on which to learn how to select athletes, design appropriate training programs, and teach the skills essential to each event.
A coach will be unable to improve human performance without understanding how the body works.
Without a working knowledge of anatomy, a coach will not understand how the parts interrelate and work together.
Without a basic understanding of biomechanics, a coach can never be effective in improving movement skills, which are based on the laws of mechanics.
Without an understanding of exercise physiology, a coach cannot plan effective programs of exercise, because they will not understand how the body adapts to training or which training applications are most appropriate and effective.
Developing a firm grasp of essential scientific knowledge is not a complex or difficult undertaking. A great coach doesn’t need to have the depth of knowledge of a research scientist, merely a secure understanding of the fundamentals.
Every new school year, on the first day of practice, Bill Bowerman would deliver this 40-second lecture on the fundamentals of training to his University of Oregon track and field/cross country team:
You stress an organism, for example, a freshman, and you let it rest. What happens? It responds by overcompensating. It becomes some increment stronger, faster, or more enduring. That’s all training is. You’d think any damn fool could figure out how to do it. The only trick is finding what works best for a specific athlete.