How to be creative as a coach and how to support the development of creativity in sport participants, athletes and players.
’Be creative!’ is a statement uttered by many coaches to their sport participants, athletes and players in sport halls, gyms, in ice rinks and on sports fields all around the world. But is creativity a skill or a trait or a quality which every sport participant already possesses or is it something that we coaches can, should and need help them to develop? And are we as coaches being creative in the way that we plan our practices? Are we challenging our own creativity? Or are we running our sessions more or less the same way each time?
These questions certainly need and deserve time. But are we talking about one creativity or many?
Having discussed creativity with a group of coaches, who are all attending the same coach development training, it became clear, that this creativity we talked about was not just one creativity but many.
The creativity that coaches asked from players, athletes and sports participants during training and in competition to solve or find unique solutions to sporting situations they find themselves in.
But also the creativity that coaches draw back on when planning their training sessions.
As well as the creativity that coaches need to help develop and nurture in their players, athletes and sports participants so that the ’Be creative’ request can be executed.
But looking closer at these three types of creativity it becomes clear that they are actually closely related to each other and are mutually conditional.
In order for a coach to request from their athletes to be creative, they first have to help those athletes to develop their own creativity, or to have the ability to act and react properly in a certain situation. This in turn can only be achieved by the coach through careful planning of the practices, which means that the coach’s creativity is called upon to create challenging practices.
So then let’s focus on the creativity that coaches can and should help develop and nurture in their sport participants, so that they will be able to find solutions to challenges and problems by themselves.
How can this be done?
Through designing practices which include sound learning design principles (Davids, 2015). Simpler: constraining the playing environment and the tasks during practices.
This will support the development of creativity in children and youth but also in adults.
This can be achieved through:
Creativity within the ’C’ System is defined as being able to find own solutions to a challenge or a problem, support the players to find their own styles of play, to practice and perfect.
As already pointed out in the introductory ’C’ System blog, the development of creativity in sports participants is one part of the ’C’ System and hence supports not just their athletic qualities but their holistic development. Finding unique solutions not only for challenges on the field of play but also for the challenges they face in their daily lives.
This was the first blog in the ’C’ system blog series. Look out for the upcoming blogs on the other ’Cs’.
Check out the materials by UK Coaching and the other resources on the ’C’ system (links in the first blog in this series).