Mentally Tougher - The Condor Performance Blog

I’m always fascinated when the term “Old School Coach” is used – a surprisingly common happening in the Australian sports industry at least. Sometimes it’s used as a positive (“we need an old school coach, these players are soft and need someone to toughen them up”) and sometime as a negative (“she’s an old school coach; she’ll never go with such a radical suggestion”). I’m not sure of where the School bit comes from – I suppose it’s to avoid sounding ageist – but I like to think that it refers to different waves (schools) in the development of sports science. In other words a coach who mostly uses methods suggested by 1960s sport science (did it exist then?) in 2011 might be described as Old School. If this is a correct assumption then I have two disputes with it. First, proper science (sport or otherwise) if adhered to correctly will still suggest the best parts of coaching from 50 years ago but eliminate that which has proved ineffective since then. Second, it over plays the importance of experience. Regardless of if you are a technical, mental or physical coach it’s the combination of the best possible (quantity and quality) experience with the best possible (quantity and quality) qualifications that will ultimately prevail. Outside of our profession of sport psychology our aim is to simply continue to improve at our ability to build mental toughness. Within the profession it’s to establish a critical mass so that everyone can see that Q X E is better than a whole bunch of E. Old School Coaches are overrated.