As coaches, are we allowing the athletes to find, answer and explore around their intrinsic motivations both in and away from the sport? In using game based, TGfU or non linear approaches as a platform, are we allowing them to personally reflect on their perceived competency and autonomously act in building skill level through making both independent and collaborative decisions in games? Are we encouraging our athletes to explore ways of “how to learn” and encourage problem solving as opposed to focusing on content and “what to learn” to allow creative ideas, independence and initiative to be explored in dynamic environments? To “borrow” from Mark O’Sullivan, are we teaching our athletes “in” the game as opposed to content “of” the game?

Eddie Jones; a fascinating bloke and a curious coach still looking to develop, learn and grow himself while engaging and testing his players with new, creative ideas, which is a great lesson for all coaches at all levels. In this blog post, we look at his role as as growth environment architect, creating environments to perform, grow and enjoy.

“Gen Z and Millennials” on the sports fields and in the workplace are getting coaches, managers and business leaders alike to re-think both how we approach and encourage the pursue of the boundaries of their sporting and innovative potential. Importantly, I believe greater understanding of the importance of this developmental age needs to be understood. While we acknowledge the multiple transitions of life, education, work and sport occurring, developmentally these people and players shall be starting to reconstruct personal past, perceive the present and anticipate the future in an internalised and evolving self-story, searching for psycho-social unity and purpose, something not worked on until these adolescent years. Supportive practices such as acknowledging and incorporating SDT and autonomy supportive practices to allow space to learn, support to understand and time to explain attitudes and beliefs for these age grade athletes and people.

“To excel, you need to love the game first”. This was one of the message conveyed by Ken Martel, technical director of USA Hockey’s American Development Model which works on coaching education and player development projects in the organisation’s youth hockey department, whom I was fortunate to spend time as part of a coaching group at University of QLD earlier this week. Martel is spending time in AUS, offering insight and outlining his ADM program and how his game based practices have increased and retained age grade hockey players to assist the NRL’s introduction of Player Development Framework.

One of the points made by Martel was “competition structure always dictates the development structure”; therefore, following his research, USA Hockey incorporated age-appropriate principles within the adopted ADM which included Practice and competition environments that are fun and engaging and Games as a significant portion of the practice environment as examples