Sports Coaching Concepts: A Framework for Coaches' Behaviour

Coaching is a central feature of sport at all levels. This groundbreaking new text is the first to offer a comprehensive introduction to the conceptual issues that underpin sports coaching practice, and to provide a complete conceptual framework for understanding sports coaching. The analysis presented within the book is practice-orientated, exploring the language of the coaching process in order to define the role of the coach, and to better understand the relationship between the coach and the sports performer.

Sports Coaching Concepts introduces the key issues behind every stage of the coaching process, presenting important new material on topics such as:

* the historical and international context of the development of sports coaching
* the role of the coach
* participation and performance coaching modes
* modelling the coaching process
* coaching 'style' and 'philosophy'
* decision-making and regulating the process
* social factors influencing practice
* the future of coach education and professionalisation.

The book draws together the existing sports coaching literature for the first time, setting it against important new conceptual developments, and promises to have a profound influence on the nature of our coach education programmes. This book therefore represents essential reading for any student of sports coaching and any serious coach wishing to develop and extend their own coaching practice.

John Lyle is Professor of Sport Coaching at Leeds Beckett University, UK, and previously Dean of the School of Psychology and Sport Sciences at Northumbria University, UK. He has had a long and successful career in higher education, first in physical education and later specialising in sport coaching studies. He established the first professional diploma in sport coaching and played a significant role in the development of sport coaching as an academic field of study. He is the author of Sports Coaching Concepts: First Edition, and co-editor of The Coaching Process and Sports Coaching: Professionalisation and Practice.

Chris Cushion is Professor of Coaching and Pedagogy at Loughborough University, UK. His research interests focus on understanding coach learning, coaching practice and coach behaviour, within a framework of developing a sociology of coaching. He has worked on projects with a number of governing body organisations and professional clubs, as well as developing coaching and coach education in non-sporting contexts such as the police and the military. He is Associate Editor of the journal Sports Coaching Review and has co-edited two recent books: Sports Coaching: Professionalisation and Practice and The Sociology of Sports Coaching.