Much like the play of athletes the behaviours of coaches can be heavily analysed, observed and adjusted according to the requirements of the athletes and the coach themselves. Certain athletes respond better to certain coaching behaviours as well as some coaches being more effective at using certain behaviours.
The key to knowing what coaching behaviour to use and when is to know three key elements and their relationship. The first of these being: “Who are we coaching?”, understanding the learners needs and wants is a key to knowing what coaching cues are appropriate such as the nature of investment of the athlete, does the athlete want to learn? The second element is: “What are we coaching?”, there must be a certain level of understanding of what you are coaching in order for you as the coach to communicate the information in an effective way and for the athlete to feel like they are being coached by someone who knows what they are talking about. The third and final element is: “How are we coaching?”, understanding of the learning environment and knowing the structure of the activity are key for effective information transfer, as well as to boost confidence and morale in team settings.
Dartfish Tagging is a way of analysing such behaviours when coaching, it can be used to tag key instructions, praise and feedback. This can allow us to observe what makes an effective coach and a bad coach in order to learn for the future, many things can be tagged based on what coaching cues we are looking for specifically and can be changed at will. In turn we can make sequential and frequential notation systems or trees, these allow us to analyse passages of play in order to better understand how to coach them in the future.
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