Folks,

What’s a bit like riding a bike? Coach education! Are you sure? 

Yep. 

We all know what education looks like. What it does and doesn’t do. Much like riding a bike. Only, if you don’t ride a bike that often, well, then you probably don’t have the skills that you might think you have. And that's the mistake coach education keeps making.

By the time Peloton realised selling fitness equipment was only the delivery mechanism— not the point — it was too late.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the point of coach education is to sell the course. But what if it were a behaviour change? How the coach sees themselves, the decisions they make and how they work with others.

It might feel harder to package and sell—after all, you know when you’ve bought a treadmill, because after a few weeks, you’re either tripping over it or hanging your washing on it.

I get it.

Community, ritual, and belonging are hard to sell—that’s people and people, well, they come in all shapes and sizes and don’t fit neatly into boxes, do they? How are you supposed to put that on a spreadsheet?

Yet, that’s the practice, no?

If you are a PE teacher looking for an inset day content, or a coach looking for coach education for your club or group of mates, you could do a lot worse than pull apart this video I did with Kelvin Giles over the weekend. The video is time-stamped. Check out 18:34 — Learning Outside the System — where Kelvin talks about the importance of self-organised study groups.

The questions worth asking when creating a study group are these:

• Who do I want to spend time with and become more like? 

• And in doing so, how quickly will I get where I want to go?

Kelvin talked about humility. If you are going to show your work, that makes sense. The last thing you need is someone with an expert problem—someone so wrapped up in what they know they forget: it's not what you know, it's what the other person learns.

That's the problem.

And the punchline?

Participation. Because to get good at riding a bike — or develop the smarts — participation separates the haves from the have-nots.

Don’t wait around!

Simon

P.S. A reminder that this Thurs 8:30 pm, I'm hosting a coach development event. You can join here: What The Dot can teach us about coaching. 

I hope you can join us.