Module 13

Humanistic Coaching - Teaching Games for Understanding

Lynn Kidman

Sport and Recreation New Zealand

One of the major reasons we participate in sport is for the human movement

experience and the excitement and indescribable feeling that comes with it. Human

movement is never static or robotic, but is expressive, creative, adaptable and

versatile and the best athletes are those who can respond to others’ movements in a

novel situation. Human movement is dynamic action always changing and modifying

and the thrill of a great move can not be underestimated. Much of this paper will

espouse the work of a humble, authentic man, Ben Lombardo, who in 1987 wrote a

book entitled “The Humanistic Coach”. Ben’s work has been the basis to my thinking

about coach development in the last dozen years or so. My interest in Teaching

Games for Understanding (TGfU), or Game Sense as known to some, is based on how

the model emphasises this human experience in sport. Thorpe and Bunker (1989)

developed TGfU as a means to enable students to learn in a more motivating

environment than was occurring in Physical Education. I will focus within the

contextual realms of sport and coaching specifically, to highlight how TGfU has

enabled athletes to revert back to ‘playing’ (the most humanistic form of movement)

and how it meets holistic needs of an individual (humanism).

Athlete-centred and humanistic coaching are terms that will be used interchangeably.

They both refer to the total development of the individual (Lombardo, 2001). They

focus on enhancing athlete self-awareness, and holistic growth and development.

Humanism, based on Maslow’s (1962) self actualisation theory and Rogers’ (1969)

work, focuses on the whole person (the athletes) and encourages athletes to reflect on

the subjective, thrilling experience of sport (Lombardo, 2001). Sport is a vehicle to

enhance personal development and self-understanding. It is an authentic experience

that develops human character that so many adults stress, but not many practise in the

sporting context.

Being authentic is the current topical term used to define real human practices and fits

in well with the idea of TGfU (which is authentic practice of sport). Ben Lombardo

(2001) espouses humanistic coaching as a tool to create within the athletes the

motivation to learn and achieve. Traditional models of coaching cater to the

socialising agencies of young people forty years ago. Today, coaching approaches

need to be modified to suit the socialisation trends of the 21st century. TGfU caters to

these trends by enabling athlete autonomy and freedom. This autonomy and freedom

come through athlete ownership, awareness and responsibility for his/her

performance. The movement experiences arising from the application of TGfU are

humanizing in that they positively influence self-esteem, self-direction, independence

and opportunities that can “express intense moments of joy and supreme well-being”

(Workman, 2001).

Workman (2001) describes the emphasis of humanistic ideology as residing ‘in

recognizing the dignity, worth, integrity, responsibility and wholeness in oneself and

in others’ (p. 85). She further suggests that competing in sport proves a personal test,

and develops creativity, improvisation and imagination. Workman says that

“humanism in sport accentuates joy in movement, personal meaning in participation,

and positive interactions with all other participants, including the so-called

‘opponents’ (p. 85). TGfU, as a model is embedded within this philosophy or should

be. However, what really happens in the sporting environment may be a different

story. Many sport environments don’t provide this authentic human experience.

Adult-structured sports often provides a good example of practices that minimise the

human experience (Bigelow, Moroney & Hall, 2001) for children.

Ben Lombardo (2001) indicates his beliefs of the problematic nature of adult

structured sports in coaching humanistically:

• Sport has a Voluntary Nature – children take it up because they want to, they

also quit because they want to. Adult structured sport perpetuates the attrition

factor in children’s sports (Wiggins, 2002).

• The particular sport has a strong intrinsic appeal for the participant: initially,

enjoyment is the primary motivation and the sport must maximize this

enjoyment. Adult structured sports can minimise enjoyment when a ‘winning

at all costs’ is the focus.

• All participants develop in many ways and at many levels as a result of the

sport experience, regardless of the specific manner in which the programme is

administered – they learn about themselves as a result of the experience, but

they don’t all learn the same thing. Learning is unique to the individual. Often

we see sporting environments where athletes are taught to perform “my way

or the highway” or taught tasks all in the same way.

• Sport has an educational intent – Often this is spelled out in the strategic plans

of sport organisations, whether it is physical, social psychological or a

combination of all. However, transferring policy to practice in adult-structured

sport often does not occur (Penney, 2006).

• Children possess a great variety of reasons for entering the sport experience,

all of which are meaningful and relevant to them and include, but are not

limited to, increased motor proficiency and winning – mostly, the reasons are

not congruent with the adult leader. Research suggests that children’s main

reasons for participating in sport are to have fun, be with friends and

experience its thrills and excitement (Roberts, Treasure and Hall, 1994).

To enable these athletes to participate for their reasons the role of the coach becomes

one of ‘releasing, facilitating and assisting, not one of manipulating and coercing’

(Lombardo, p. 86)

The Development of TGfU

TGfU, widely used at all levels of athlete communities is an example of humanistic,

athlete-centred coaching. TGfU enhances performance through learning tactics and

skills (including technique) through a game. It is a model which promotes and enables

athletes to obtain life-long learning in physical, cognitive, social and emotional

domains (which are humanistic) using games as the learning experience. For my book

Developing Decision Makers: an empowerment approach to coaching, I interviewed

one of the main developers of TGfU, Rod Thorpe, about how the development of

TGfU occurred. I first asked him why he originally had the idea of TGfU, and

breaking away from a traditional skill learning model. He said:

…there were many interlinked reasons that came out of our thoughts on

skill learning—most pertinently, the then forgotten aspects of perception

and decision making, motivation, social psychology, teaching

methodologies, etc. I would also add that we were taught the value of

small side games as students in the early ‘60s, even though we were

taught to focus on the ‘skill’ part of the lesson.

When we watched youngsters playing on their own, either in a recreation

setting or, say, before a practice session or lesson, we often noted quite

sophisticated movements and interactions. A few examples might help:

• Youngsters put some coats down to make soccer goals for a game.

There are seven of them but they decide to play three, including the

oldest player, against four, including the two youngest.

• There is a pick-up game (play rather than organised game) of three-v-

three cricket in a rural area, mixed ages. The youngsters decide to

make a rule that ‘The big kids can’t bowl fast’.

• At the start of a basketball lesson, the coach has not arrived. The

youngsters are playing two-v-two and using disguise, reverse dunks

(or nearly). The coach walks [in] and coaches ‘fundamentals’,

divorced from any game or individual need. The kids were

challenging themselves and each other; the coach failed to do so.

The common factor in our observations was that when children were

getting on with it, uncluttered by teachers and coaches, they were often

more productive in terms of learning in context, enhancing motivation

through challenges, social interactions, etc. They were empowered by

circumstance. … we noticed that kids left alone often had it and were the

better for it. If we accept that well-intentioned coaching is not always

better than no coaching, we might examine our practice more carefully”

(p. 23).

What started as a Bunker and Thorpe’s (1982) logical practical opportunity to

enhance student learning and after many years of promoting the model, TGfU has

been rigorously researched as to its value for students or athletes. The research

highlights the constructivist approach (Griffin & Butler, 2005) as a learning theory

and skill acquisition specialists (Turner, 2005) are keen to research cognitive learning

effects of the model. However, I want to revisit a bit of the early intention of the

TGfU model as highlighted by Kretchmar (2005) of teaching for meaningful

experiences and delight in participation. The rationales for learning within a context

of the sport game falls into constructivist learning, but humanistic coaching enables

the athletes to construct sport experiences authentically and motivates them to gain

the intrinsic desire to improve their movement capabilities, thus enabling the

constructivist learning process to occur.

Humanistic Coaching (Athlete-centred Coaching)

The purpose of coaching is to enable athletes to learn in a way that works best for

them (Kidman, 2005). First, this is about their individual physical and mental

makeup, and where they are with technical and tactical development. Second, it is

about being able to perform to their best when in competition or when challenged

(SPARC, 2006).

In a competitive situation the athlete will preferably just compete, be ‘in the moment’

and react based on his/her self-awareness of the situation or movement. Part of the

self-belief will be that he/she has an appropriate goal and knows that he/she can get

back on track when something goes astray. The learning that happens at training

should be about developing that skill – the skill of self correcting or self coaching and

being the best that you can be on that day (SPARC, 2006). TGfU caters to this well,

provides competition and authentic situational opportunities for athletes to experience

and learn.

In his book Ben Lombardo (2001) highlights our oversight (often unintentional) in

ensuring that, as coaches, our mission is to create better human beings. He suggests

that the experience in sport should be about being authentic, true to oneself, human in

every way. TGfU is a model that enables humanistic experiences to happen. Play is

one of these intrinsic experiences, as it is spontaneous and expresses uniqueness.

Current sport programmes can suppress this human need of play and spontaneity. The

environments that demand conformity don’t promote the ‘play’ within sport.

However, TGfU promotes play, perpetuates spontaneity, creativity and innovation

and enables athletes to learn from constructing experiences.

TGfU is humanistic because it enhances athletes’ motivation and thus their intensity

of performance through their own problem solving. Athletes increase their effort

because of the meaningful challenges offered. These challenges also create

opportunities for athletes to respond to pressure inherent in sport competitions.

Achievement is also enhanced as TGfU enables athletes to do something well, to

problem solve, and to take ownership for their own learning. Of course, enjoyment is

also enhanced because games are fun. Through games, athletes share success and

failure; they learn how to trust each other and to about each other’s ways of

competing and making decisions, which enhances team culture.

Sports within organisations contribute to the growth and development of an individual

and participation should be enjoyable as well as promote learning. As Ben Lombardo

(2001) suggests, sport has been dominated by a system where the needs and interests

of the coach overtake those of the athletes. He calls the adult structured and ruled

system a Professional Model of Coaching whereby coaches have the power to make

all the important decisions and are mostly devoted to product outcomes, rather than

the process of developing people. The coach-centred approach that I refer to in

Athlete-Centred Coaching (2005) is a disempowering form of leadership which takes

ownership and responsibility of sporting experiences away from the athletes. When

coaching tactics and skills at training sessions, coach-centred coaches traditionally

tend to give athletes specific directions on what to ‘fix’ or the exact moves to

perform. In some cases, coaches believe that unless they are seen to be telling athletes

what to do and how to do it, they are not doing their job properly.

As a model, TGfU is an approach which, if used with the Professional Model of

Coaching in mind, can perpetuate the coach centred existence where coaches maintain

power and control and not worry so much about the process of developing fine young

human beings. TGfU has been seen by some as an outstanding tool to learn through

games, but the opportunities for athletes to learn thought the game is sometimes taken

away when coaches dominate athlete learning opportunities. The purpose of TGfU is

to enable athlete learning and decision making. Athletes learn through playing the

game and solving problems within the game. If the coach sets up the game or the

problem, lets the athletes play, then calls them back and tells them how to fix skill or

solve tactical problems, the learning is taken away from the athlete. To leave the

athletes to learn and facilitate this learning is a different task to understand and

coaches who can withhold their knowledge enable athlete responsibility and learning

(Whitmore, 2002). This withholding of knowledge, which is a sign of emotional

intelligence and empathy, enables athletes to solve the problems. The athletes are the

ones who have to understand the game, they are playing and have to make split

second decisions while in competition. Therefore, the athlete needs to solve the

problem, not the coach. In TGfU, the coach facilitates that problem solving, but does

not solve it for them.

At the 2003 biennial TGfU conference in Melbourne, Rod Thorpe expressed his

concern about coaches actually practising athlete-centred learning:

The real concern for me was that sometimes in a search for a more ‘structured

lesson’ or ‘physical education programme’, many of the adaptations were at

the expense of the individual and certainly at the expense of individual

empowerment.

Teaching Games for Understanding/Game Sense is being embraced,

adapted and developed. This is heartening to me and the many other

people who contributed to the early models. But if the developments do

not retain those elements that surround the concept of empowering the

individual athlete, they miss the point (Kidman, 2005, p. 243)

With TGfU, athletes can learn about the game and practise skills and techniques

within the context of a game rather than separate from it. Learning in context provides

a sound understanding of the game and opportunities to apply skill and technique

under pressure. When athletes are allowed to play or practice, in a situation

uncluttered by coaches telling them what to do and where to go, they are more

productive in terms of learning in context, enhancing motivation through challenges,

social interactions and decision making (Kidman & Hanrahan, 2004) and working

under pressure. The key here is that the coaches don’t tell them what to do, the

athletes work it out for themselves.

Creating Independent Athletes

A key to coaching is the ability to read the situation and decide when to stand back

and let athletes play and when to jump in and try and give them some thinking

opportunities. Often, we as coaches lose sight as to where the athletes want to head.

Athletes have a need to be understood, not evaluated or judged. They need to be

simply understood from their point of view; that is empathy. One of the major tools

for athletes to learn is to become self-aware. To become self-aware, there is an

element of self-evaluation that must occur. It is not an easy process and coaches must

nurture and encourage athletes to gain this self-awareness by allowing them to make

mistakes and enable independence and confidence. If athletes are dependent on the

coach for total instruction, there can be an increase in stress to do exactly what is

asked. If they are dependent on the coach, they won’t easily be able to make decisions

on the field or pitch. If coaches can increase awareness, thought processes become the

athletes rather than robotically copying what the coach says.

Contemporary social and cultural life demonstrate socializing agents (e.g. two parents

working, lots of computer games, developing dependent people) that influence

athletes of today. Unfortunately, in many instances, coach systems, as Ben Lombardo

points out, have failed to recognise and adjust to these changes, continuing to coach

children the way we were coached 40 years ago (which was appropriate for the

culture of that time). It is not appropriate to have children who spend all day making

their own decisions arrive at the pitch or sport environment to have all the meaningful

decision making is taken away from them and made by adult leaders.

Humanistic coaching promotes one of independence, one of relying on each other

within a sport context for the best performance. TGfU creates independent athletes

who have to perform their way rather than depend on the instruction from the coach.

It is important to review the benefits and determine why each athlete participates or

competes. Unfortunately, what happens in sport is that the adults decide the direction

and the sport environment becomes the place for adults to express their power and

intentions of what sport is to them making athletes dependent on them. The overriding

goals of coaches tend to be motor efficiency and winning (Lombardo, 1987) even

though research shows that the main reason for sport participation is socialization, fun

and the pursuit (and I stress the word pursuit as a process not an outcome) of

excellence.

What’s Happening in New Zealand?

New Zealand coach development refelects recognition of the need for coaches to

develop an athlete-centred coaching philosophy (humanistic) through practice. As

part of that development, Sport and Recreation New Zealand (SPARC) talked to

coaches around New Zealand on how to develop quality coaches. These coaches first

said that coach development should be community based. These communities (from

Middle Childhood to High Performance athletes) determine what sort of learning

needs to occur to develop quality coaches who are ‘world-class’ within their own

coaching communities.

TGfU supports this athlete-centred approach. Physically it works on motor

proficiency, cognitively, it focuses on decision making in tactical situations and there

is authentic practice within a sporting environment. Emotionally, TGfU creates

similar situations to those that arise within the winning and pressure contexts of

competitive matches and enable athletes to have authentic competitive experiences.

Socially, games for understanding is learned mostly in small groups, whereby there is

a learning experience of dealing with other people and of providing opportunities for

the development of leadership It is one of a few learning models which enable

athletes to learn holistically, meeting the human needs that focus on the athlete.

Mary O’Sullivan at the ICHPER Conference in New Zealand (2006) suggested that

for physical education teacher education, we need to design curriculum to match the

needs of student-centred learning. Students (and for this paper, athletes) need to

learn through experience and have opportunities to solve problems and take

responsibility for their learning. She suggested that we need to have learning

communities, where commonalties and purposes of learning are mutual. Many

policies overtly support the direction that New Zealand coach development has taken,

but the implementation of these policies seldom thrives, as such a task is glossed over

and put into the ‘too hard’ basket. New Zealand Coach Development has taken on the

challenge by attempting to enable coaches to have opportunities to learn ‘on the job’,

focus on athlete-centred coaching and learn within likeminded coaching communities.

TGfU has been included in every community as an important model to enable the

holistic development of athletes. In her research Catherine Ennis at the AIESEP

conference in Finland (2006) also reinforced TGfU as a best practice model which

meets the needs of student-centred learning through affective and cognitive learning.

Summary

So, where is this humanistic coaching? I know there are great examples of best

practice in the sporting context based on humanism as I personally have seen its

practices, but many of the practices still occur in the traditional, prescriptive way.

Humanistic coaching is still dismissed as the “fluffy, tree hugging, dolphin stroking”

way and as a coaching fraternity, we don’t encourage athlete awareness, ownership

and responsibility. Many sports and coaching organisations believe and state in their

strategic plans that athlete centred learning should be used to develop individuals, but

often the nature of policy creation does not always lead to quality implementation.

The organisational leaders seldom actually practise what they preach in these

documents, and rather display behaviours of conformity (Lombardo, 1987). Sport and

coaching organisations claim difficulty due to the commercialisation trend which

seems to have interrupted the need to focus on human learning and still retain the

bottom line, money based on results. Interestingly, the research now is saying that an

athlete centred approach actually will enable better performance and enhance winning

(Kidman, 2005), where athletes are encouraged to become self-aware and take

ownership and responsibility for their learning needed to perform well.

As long as sport is conducted to take individuality and uniqueness away, the

humanistic experience won’t proceed. Breaking away from the structured model is

difficult because of parent and administrators expectations of coaches and athletes and

the influence of the media. Until recently, little attention has been given to

implementing or practising humanistic coaching. Coaches are making the move with

TGfU to a more motivational learning environment, using sport as an authentic

learning experience, just like the research rhetoric indicates should occur (Jones,

2006). TGfU is an humanistic approach and enhances athlete motivation which thus

encourages athletes to want to learn and understand. This motivation and enjoyment

from the sport experience will keep athletes in sport and physical activity longer.

TFfU is a great model to cater for the humanistic needs of athletes. It has the benefit

of providing physical learning opportunities, embedded in cognitive learning

outcomes and decision making. TGfU also focuses on affective development whereby

social and emotional needs are learned. Teaching Games for Understanding promotes

the humanistic side of individuals whereby each person’s experience is unique and

can be designed around the desires and thrills of the individual. In essence, Ben

Lombardo was forward thinking in his book to try to get sport back to its original

intention. It is time to use sport as a tool to focus on human qualities. As Ben

Lombardo (1987) rightly suggested, “Sport has the potential to truly liberate the

essence of being fully human” (p. 85)

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