One Player at a Time - a primer

Here’s a page with all my One Player at a Time posts.

Coaching is often described as both an art and a science. One Player at a Time is designed to get at both realms of a coach’s expertise. When coaches talk about their values and philosophy, it tends to be heavy on the “art” side of the spectrum. It can be challenging to talk about such things in the abstract. But when coaches are out there practicing their craft, they lean much more heavily on the “science”: the what, when, and how of the job.

The purpose of One Player at a Time is to bring the who and the why (the art of coaching) to the surface by investigating the science of coaching in a very specific way. Instead of speaking of coaching in the abstract, I invite a coach to discuss the science of how they coach one athlete in particular. Through the course of the discussion, the art of their coaching becomes apparent through their science.

The goal of One Player at a Time is not to give coaches solutions to their coaching problems but to give coaches insight into how their values and beliefs can and do affect the coaching they do. I believe that I coach who I am, that my best coaching work is done when I am most authentically myself. This series of discussions is intended to give examples of what authentic coaching can look like.