July, 2021

Welcome to the fourth edition of our Coaching Newsletter

• Check out the Bowls Australia’s Rookie Rollers program which is available nationwide. Contact BA or your Regional Bowls Manager (RBM) for more information.
• Contact local schools and offer Lawn Bowls as part of their sports program.
• Create an out-of-school-hours program aimed at providing a structured program introducing kids to the sport.

Are you improving?

What and when was the last thing you did to significantly improve your coaching? It’s a question I ask coaches all the time. If I don't ask it outright, I slowly get around to it in a slightly circuitous way. If you are still coaching the same way you were doing it even just five years ago, you are out of date. The world has changed.

One of the ways I know is, I get emails from players who have just been “coached” in a way that is so out-of-date and so “my way or the highway” style comments it makes me cringe. I was reminded of this the other day in an email from a man just being introduced to the game. He was lucky enough to get one of our really good coaches, but his friend got one of our not-quite-as-good coaches. As it happens the newbie bowler is one of the most qualified business trainers and information deliverers in the country, so he is well placed to pass comment. When someone with those credentials talks, I am all ears.

I followed up with a phone call, and we chatted for quite some time about a range of things including “self determination theory”, “autonomous learning” approaches, reward styles, coach mapping and a whole broad conversation piece around the future of the sport, and the role of coaching in that future.

One of the areas we spoke about is the need for coaches to continuously self assess and improve or evolve in the role. Do you allow those you coach to provide you feedback on your coaching? So I come back to the first sentence, what and when was the last thing you did to significantly  improve your coaching?  

MB

Working with selectors

One of the great anomalies of our sport is the role of the selector. Their job is tough, thankless, often poorly described and in most cases, is mired in historical process baggage. I have heard it said “if you want to be Freddy-no-friends, become a club selector.” I have worked with a lot of clubs over the last fifteen years that did not have a written job description for the selectors role and even those that did used language so vague that no-one could make the job truly work.

To make it even more precarious, we do it differently than almost every other sport (of course we have it right and everyone else is completely wrong)... Almost without exception I hear club selectors say “I pick players that are compatible to make teams that play well together.” One of the things you will learn about when you do the Selection Module is the role of compatibility (hint; it doesn't have a role).

With the exception of the Selection Module there is no training available for selectors. No doubt that a selector at Club level has one of the toughest jobs in the game, and we expect them to get it right with no job or task description and no training. Good luck with that!

In an ideal world, if a player is dropped from a team or side, the player is given some information about the cause or reason for the decision such that allows the player to go away, find a coach and start working on fixing the problem. That seems pretty straight forward to me, I wonder if it really happens anywhere?

What for why

If you have ever run a training session when your players didn't really connect with it, or you didn't get the exact buy-in you wanted or were expecting, the easy reaction is “why don't they get stuff like that?” or “why don't they understand”, in fact to make your life easier, stop asking any “why” questions at all.

Start asking “what” questions. What can I change to make it work better? What can I do to make it work? What can I say to help? What way will work better for everyone?

By moving away from the “why” questions you are moving away from the blame game. Good coaches ask good questions, we all know that. Good coaches don't blame, they construct, they construct solutions, fixes and do-overs. Yay for us!

My own coaching journey

As many of you know, I have not been bowling for a while, following a nasty Motorbike accident when a driver turned into a freeway the wrong way. My right knee has never really recovered and as a left hander I cannot rely on it at all. The easiest way around the pain was to stop bowling. But I have really missed all the other (social) stuff that happens on a bowls green so I have finally bitten the bullet and I'm going to learn how to use a bowling arm. Starting over is causing me some anxiety and one of the ways I am dealing with it is to write about it, hoping that you coaches may find it instructive.

As I write this, it is the day before my first lesson. I have found a coach I know and trust so I am not worried about that at all, but I can certainly understand that first lesson with someone you don't know could well be the cause of a sleepless night. I am most worried about two separate and unrelated things. Firstly, will I get as much enjoyment from bowling using an arm? I have always been such a fan of the point of release and getting close to the ground and watching the beautiful arc of the bowl as it slows, I am worried that I wont get the same level of enjoyment from a standing position using a bowling aid.

The second thing that is worrying me is, will I be any good at it? Some of my previous club mates will tell you I was no good at the game when I last played. But I did get to a standard that allowed a level of enjoyment just playing. Some good days, some bad days, but always an element of enjoyment. Will that be the same?

I will let you know how it goes.

One week later...

What a difference a week makes. Isn't this just a beautiful game! Gosh I have missed the beautiful 15 second arc of a lawn bowl and the peace I get watching it float to its rightful place. It is like going to church. I learned quite a few things in my very first lesson. Chief amongst the learnings was the inbuilt pre-shot routine (PSR) that an arm bowler has. Of course the same could be said for a traditional bowler, but they have to acknowledge it first. An arm bowler has no choice but to get the bowl prepared into the device the same way every time.

The other significant thing I learned was what a terrific coach Clay Parker is (East Maitland BC NSW). He quickly cottoned onto my way of learning and my tolerance for information and we got on with it. As soon as I got home I went online and ordered an arm. I am going to practice and get proficient at it. I'm excited about the game again. Look out.

Six weeks later...

I have been practicing three times a week, for about 90 minutes a session. I have been trying a new stance, and also trying a few new things around the swing and the grip. I have returned to the way I was shown by Clay, on all but one thing, which is the stance, so I am super keen to run my ideas by him. Our second session together was brief as he guided my thinking on a new stance. Really brilliant coaching again. Look out world here I come!

Coach Question

This question came to me out of the blue through the Bowls Australia website. “Can you tell me if there is some rule that says a Coach can't offer help to a bowler without first being asked?”
What do you think about that, my fellow coaches?

My response was something along the lines of, 'while there is no rule to that effect, I would be hesitant to offer anyone assistance without being asked. Imagine if someone came up to you and said they could help you dress better. Without knowing what the player wants, the coach does not have a role to play, I reckon. Much more appropriate behaviour would be for the coach to create the environment that would allow a player to make contact with a her/him and ask. That means setting up training, and practice sessions. It also means creating relationships. Which also means developing trust.'

Promoting your services

It can be a real challenge to promote your services as a coach in your own club. I know of several coaches that struggle with this to the point that they coach in other clubs and not their own. So I thought I would give you a few suggestions on how to promote yourself internally and also throw the door open to all of the coaches reading this and ask you for any of your ideas please.

Promotional Tool 1: Write something in your Club Newsletter. Your club Newsletter is a great opportunity for you to yell about your training nights or your training mornings. Make sure you include some contact details in the article. Be humble, be kind, make it an offer and not a demand. Your mobile phone and your email needs to be included as a minimum I reckon.

Promotional Tool 2: Use Zoom. I'm sure there are players at your club who are less than keen to be seen being coached. So if you can do this another way, by being invisible, that may get you a few more players. In a private ZOOM session you could chat with your player and discuss their needs or their requirements and you could then email them a training session, or a drill or some suggestions about how to solve their dilemma.

Promotional Tool 3: A Wanted Poster. Get a mug shot taken in your club shirt and put up a poster in the club with your contact details on it. It is often new or newish bowlers that need the most help, so letting them know who you are and how they can find you is a great place to start.

Promotional Tool 4: Have a regular training session each and every week at the club. Friday afternoon is popular. You can set up a few training rinks with targets and scoring opportunities and let them find you (warning; this can be a very lonely way to get started).

Promotional Tool 5: Make an outrageous offer. I have often said to people who don't regularly train at bowls that a coach can make you 20% better in 20 minutes. Then of course you have to have the material to be able to back up that claim. Any good coach will have drills at the ready, that he/she can spend 20 minutes explaining and then leave the player to it. Twenty minutes of coaching and within a few weeks, anyone who is being honest and keen about their drills will be noticing their improvement. As I don't charge for my coaching time, I also offer a money back guarantee.

Any other ideas? Please send them to me at mbeaumont@bowls.com.au.

Conundrum from last Newsletter

As a coach you have been approached by a newish bowler to help them improve their game. Where do you start?

Here is a collective of the very best thinking from the last newsletter.

Because you are a player-focussed coach, the first place to start is with a good chat. You need answers to a lot of questions because there are going to be so many gates to get through on this road to improvement, and the player has the keys to most of them. This is why it is often hardest for a parent to coach their child to success. As a parent it is SO tempting to be the person with all the answers, you, after all, know best (quite natural of course). Coaches are not burdened by this sort of thinking (or shouldn't be).

You need answers to things like;

• How much improvement are they wanting?
• How much effort are they willing to put into the improvement?
• What ‘other’ activities do they have going on in their lives that may become impediments to that improvement or influence the process?
• Who are the stakeholders in this operation?
• How much time do they have?
• How do they learn best?
• Does the player have some specific goals in mind?
• Are there any readily recognisable roadblocks?

Thanks for your answers they were great!

New Coaching resource

Like me, you are probably constantly on the look out for coaching resources, books, newsletters etc. Bob Tuck very kindly sent me a copy of his Coaching Manual “Lawn Bowls, The game and how to play it well”. As you can imagine I do get sent a few bits and pieces like this from time to time and if they are not very good, I just shelve them. This is very good.

The soft cover book is 75 pages, glossy covered, and I think its really good. Bob is a South Australian and has done it all in the admin of the game. The book costs $24 and is worth every penny, I think. I always think of it this way. Did I get one new idea? If yes, its money well spent. Did I get more than one new idea? If yes, it's a bargain. If I get more than two, then the purchase price doesn't even enter the equation. I think this is one of those books.

I was a huge fan of the maths section. But other sections may resonate with you. There is a good section on practice routines which is always helpful for any coach. For more information you can visit his website www.getagameofbowls.com. The manual is also available as an ebook for $5 and the profits of the online version go to Bob’s club. Just saying...

Great Coaches

Ask yourself, what makes a great coach? It doesn't matter what sport you are thinking about, the answer is going to be pretty much the same. Great coaches do things differently. But they also do things better than others. Now these two things seem incredibly obvious on the surface of it, but they are not. Because some average coaches could also fit under this umbrella too. I have no doubt there are average (or even poor) coaches that do things differently and do some things better than others. After all, we each have our own strengths and weaknesses, don't we.

I believe that great coaches become great because they start by understanding themselves. They are aware of their own strengths and they are also aware of the areas they need help. Additionally, great coaches all have a growth mindset. They are always on the look out for learning opportunities. A win is good to get, but not at the expense of learning something. A loss is, while not what they were aiming for, completely acceptable if you learn something from the experience.

In this regard, bowls is no different from any other sport.

Did you know?

From time to time, I trawl the internet for Bowls information. Some of it is useful and some of it makes me cringe. I am forever cautioning new bowlers and new coaches about the internet. Just because it's there doesn't make it true. For instance, I watched a short film on the “17-hand signals used in Bowls”.

I have long been an advocate for us to use more hand signals coincidentally, but this was a brave new world for me.

Dealing with negativity

I'm going out on a limb here and make a big bold statement. “Every single one of you has dealt with negativity around coaching from members of your club.” If you haven’t, please send me an email, I am so completely dead keen to find out why you haven’t, or to find out why you haven't picked up on it yet.

In our survey of coaches in 2020, the issue came up time and time again from coaches all over the country. Some coaches saying things like “I went to a two day training course to become a coach and when I returned as a qualified coach, nothing changed at my club and no-one came to me for coaching” and “the table of knowledge just cant be beaten, they swear by the old ways and nothing can change their minds.”

The truth of the matter is, two days is not going to cut it. Your club is probably right. For coaches to be effective they need to have some success, and frankly some failures. That means putting yourself out there and taking some risks. The best way to do that is probably to improve yourself. Make use of the things you learned at your training course and apply them to yourself first. Get on the green and practice purposefully, scoring your effort and conducting useful targeted (not to mix a metaphor) drills. If the players at your club see you practicing in a way that improves your game, they will soon want to be a part of it too.

I recently moved to the country and joined a new club, having not played a game of bowls for six years following my motorbike accident. I have spent twelve years coaching and running coaching courses at all levels of the game so I am reasonably confident in my abilities as a coach and trainer, but this is a new club. These are all players that don't know me, and frankly couldn't give two hoots about my past.

If I wanted to coach at this new club (and having watched one game of social bowls, I knew I did) I had to establish my bona fides. So I got out on the green early, with my half tennis balls and my score sheet and started practicing. Because I was now learning how to use a bowling arm, they could clearly see I was keen to improve and learn. They could see I was prepared to put in the effort to improve in a structured way.

Was there still some negativity, you bet there was. Many of the established players had never seen something like structured drills on the green and had never done anything other than “roll-up” for years, so all of this was new. To see a 40-bowl test in action was anathema to many of them. It's only natural for some of them to think it is voodoo or sleight of hand. But they soon came around when they could see firstly my own improvement and then gradually the young ones coming on board and then the new bowlers getting involved. In the end, it was the very same fear that had prevented them from getting involved, that then motivated them to participate. They were scared they were going to be overtaken by the players in the club who were quickly improving.

We still had a few stand outs, and thats okay too. Remembering that we bowl for different reasons. Some of us want to get better, some are just hiding from their partners.

Selecting your Coach
by Gail Page And Pete Davies – Advanced Coaches.

Accredited Coaches have a responsibility to self-check, regularly, how we relate to our Club members or Zone/Regional reps or Squad members. How do we sell ourselves as being the Coach that our people WANT as THEIR coach?

As Introductory Coaches, are we being recommended as the Coach to see?
As Club Coaches, do we have people coming to us, asking to be Coached?
As State or Squad accredited Coaches, are we being asked to Coach at that level?

Most of the time, we will just not be approached, by Club members or State admin if we are doing a sub-standard job, so time to refresh our thinking and put ourselves on the other side of the fence and see ourselves from the perspective of a new bowler, or that State appointer.

How do those people see us, compared to how we wish to be seen?

Are we up to scratch, or do we need to re-appraise our technique and practical skills, so that others will want to approach us again.

Gain personal confidence - without Confidence we can achieve next to nothing, and that applies especially to Bowls.

Experience is the best teacher they say, but you have to walk the talk to gain experience, and then improve our craft, constantly. THEN you will be in demand as the “THE COACH” to go and see!

Disability Bowlers
Gail and I played in the World masters games in 2017 in NZ. We played against an able-bodied lady, however her partner used two Crutches and had leg callipers as well. This as you can imagine generated severe limitations in his delivery technique, however he was able to Bowl extremely well kneeling on the ground from a fixed position.

So, the lesson here is, that everybody, literally, is different, and no bowler should be assessed in the same way as the last. It may take several suggestions, and some practice, but as Coaches we don’t want anyone leaving the green at the end of a lesson feeling no improvement has been made.

Experienced Bowlers
When we coach experienced bowlers we do not try to change their Style, or the individuality of their delivery, but instead after careful observation, and ascertaining why they have enlisted the help of a Coach, suggest how they might try some slight variations, to see if that helps out in their own problem area.

Notice “Their own problem area ”... what works for 'player A' may well be a disaster for 'player B', e.g. suggesting a bigger step from the mat might not work for a person with a knee reconstruction.

New Bowlers
So what about new bowlers you may ask. We teach textbook coaching. As Accredited Coaches, we need to discourage new bowlers from wanting to learn how to play from someone who has been making the same mistakes for years. How do we do this? The most appropriate way is by having a regular time to make coaching available. Get a few people along, even some mates to start, YOU NEED TO GET NOTICED! Do some drills, set up a green with some interesting and highly visible tasks. We use safety cones (bright orange) - cheap and effective as a coaching tool.

Advise new bowlers along these lines
“You can leave us and if you go to another Accredited Coach you should be able to pick up straight away from where we left you.”

All Coaches who work with children should be suitably accredited with a current WWCC. i.e. A working with Children Certificate (or a Police Check within their own State).

We also recommend that even Coaches at Club level have a First aid Certificate, or at the very least know how to attend to someone whilst Medical assistance is awaited.

Coaches should ask, especially new bowlers, what their Medical status or background is before a first lesson, as well as a family member contact number (even a bee sting can be a serious situation for some people). Gail was stung on the green once (she suffers from a severe allergic reaction) and the immediate attention she received was appalling! Now you may understand why.

Be able to volunteer references from previous students. Be the Coach that someone can relate to. Men and women Coaches teach in different ways. Gail and I say the same things, but in varying ways. We teach in tandem as we find that this gives our students the best chance of understanding, learning and just as importantly ENJOYING our game.

There are many levels of Coach within the sport of Bowls

An Introductory Coach: Works with schools, social bowlers and beginners. this may even be a member of staff at your local club; Will show you essentials of what needs to occur to commence bowling, safety requirements, legal requirements, group instruction methods.

Club Coach: The Club Coach will show you all you have to do locally, within your District and Zone, coaching regularly at club level, either team or individual coaching. Covers planning, risk management, technique and shot development and more.

Advanced Coach - Group/Zone and State Teams: Managing teams while travelling, technique correction, understand talent ID, physical considerations of athletes and more.

Pathways Coach: Working with athletes who are categorised as either Developing or Emerging athletes on the BA Player Pathway, and who are striving to represent Australia at future Commonwealth Games, World Bowls Championships and other international events.

High-Performance Coach: Working with external consultants (sport scientists, sports psychologists etc), developing strategies to win at the elite level, planning for major competitions (Commonwealth Games, World Championships), Talent ID and more.

Even at the lowest level of coaching, we can learn more. Just as importantly, at the highest level, we need to remember, that we still have to be able to relate to new bowlers, the bowlers we need at Club, regional State and National level, the very lifeblood for the continuance of our sport.

Join or create a Coaches Mentoring Group; we are happy to help or assist in that direction.

Cheers, good bowling, happy and enjoyable coaching.
Gail Page And Pete Davies – Advanced Coaches

Coaching Conundrum

I think we have all seen someone like this. A “roll-up” champion. Never off the jack while he/she is in “roll-up” mode, but in a game they just fall apart, too narrow, too wide, too long, too short. What would you do? I am SUPER keen to hear your solutions to this coaching conundrum. I will share the best of them in the next edition.