Professor Shane Pill from Flinders University in South Australia is one of the leading experts and researchers in coaching and sports education. He was recently awarded the Presidents Award by the Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation for distinguished service to the profession. Shane discusses his transition from a physical education teacher in the 1980’s to his role researching coaching pedagogies and specifically the game sense approach to coaching and teaching sport. He discusses the differences between pedagogical models of teaching skills through games and highlights the requirement for struggle to promote growth and development. Shane is a wealth of knowledge in this area and his explanations will hopefully go towards coaches being able to apply some of the methods he discusses to build more resilient and skillful athletes.
Take away's from this episode are:
1.That Kids and athletes play sports to play the game – the best way to prepare them for playing is by actually playing the game not by using one dimensional training drills that require little or no decision making.
2.A games based approach has to be purposeful and provide meaningful learning opportunities.
3.Athletes require some amount of struggle to learn and develop, but there has to be a struggle point – too hard and we lose the athletes, too easy and the learning process is not effective.

This podcast is Part 1 of 2.