Gymnastics Canada Hosts Culture and Coaching Development Webinar with Dr. Gretchen Kerr and Dr. Dave Tilley -

Today on the podcast I’m very excited to share the second part of a super popular webinar series with Gretchen Kerr, a University of Toronto researcher.

We were very grateful and fortunate to be asked by Gymnastics Canada to have a discussion around safe sport, culture change, and what ‘outdated methods’ we need to move away from. Diving into what the research says, and how we can help coaches and athletes be happier.

In webinar two we focused on two things, the need to move away from a punishment model of coaching to more of a positive discipline model, that teaches athletes instrumental values for the rest of their life. Secondly, we talk about going from training hard to training smart.

Gretchen shares some ideas and research and I share my clinical experiences from being a researcher and give practical examples of how I’ve changed and still achieved productive practices. We discuss:

The benefits of positive, healthy sport for athletes and coaches.
Shifting from punishment to discipline and the difference between the two.
A cultural shift, how and why you should train smarter not harder.
What is an autonomy-supportive coaching style?
Building better relationships with your athletes by sharing uncertainty with them, admitting when you don’t know, and asking others for help.
At what age you should involve athletes in goal setting and individual programming.
Why you should provide feedback that is solution-focused rather than problem-focused.

To listen to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher click below: