Individualising Coaching in Olympic and Paralympic Worlds: An Applied Perspective

Abstract

This practical advance paper outlines the complexity of simultaneously coaching in Olympic and Paralympic disciplines of canoeing. The paper integrates applied experience from the Tokyo Games with a critical review of disability literature to explore the importance of the creation of shared mental models to inform the development of a performance vision in elite sport. The paper first addresses the design and development of complex performance visions, which underpins the delivery of such elite programmes. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the paper addresses the fundamental issue that Paralympic sport is not a microcosm of Olympic sport and that performance visions and coaching processes created in an able-bodied environment cannot be cut, copied, and pasted into a Paralympic setting. Offering applied insight from this unique dual perspective, the paper discusses the complexity of designing a well-structured performance vision. We propose that although such performance visions developed in Olympic and Paralympic contexts share some similarities, the design of shared mental models needs to be bespoke to the performance setting. The paper articulates the additional complexities of shared mental models deployed in a paracanoe setting and offers recommendations as to how we can better support the construction of performance visions in Paralympic sport.

High performance coach cognition in the wild: using applied cognitive task analysis for practical insights–cognitive challenges and curriculum knowledge

“…Therefore, there were significant demands on the capacities of coaches to make sense of incoming data and to flexibly execute a plan that suited the needs of their athletes (Ward et al, 2018;Ashford and Taylor, 2022). Thus, our empirical data is supportive of the proposal that coaches at the highest levels of performance need to engage in significant sensemaking based on the unique and individual needs of each athlete (Simon and Richards, 2022). Going further, we also suggest that adaptive skill is a fundamental prerequisite for effective coaching practice (Ward et al, 2018).…”

“…This suggests the need to recognize individual relational dyads as part of a wider orchestration of the milieu (cf. Jones and Wallace, 2006;Potrac and Jones, 2009) and the distribution of leadership facilitated by the coach (Simon and Richards, 2022).…”

Optimizing wheelchair basketball lineups: A statistical approach to coaching strategies

“…Wheelchair Basketball (WB) is one of the most popular Paralympic sports, and it is played on a competitive level in over 80 countries around the world [ 1 ]. As highlighted by Askew and colleagues [ 2 ], high-performance Paralympic sports provide rich environments for innovation also because performance strategies and coaching methods developed in an able-bodied context cannot simply be transplanted into the Paralympic setting [ 3 ]. Since WB has reached an increased level of professionalism, the primary concerns of the coaches and the technical staff are how to optimize the factors contributing to the success of game performance and how to select players [ 4 , 5 ].…”