Sports’ coaching is a very complex and complicated process. It is a process that requires input from a wide variety of specialist sub disciplines within the area. The management and the uniting of these specialist areas into a strategy to improve sporting performance is the major role of the coach (Lyle, 1999). Woodman (1993) expressed this ability of the coach as a form of ‘art’ and suggests that the better a coaches understanding of the sciences surrounding the coaching process the more effective a coach will be in the art of coaching. Coaching is an emerging profession and the sports coach has an increasing number of responsibilities. The process is underpinned by values and ideologies proposed by such foundations as the National Coaching Foundation (NCF) (1996) who provide a framework of rules for coach behaviour. The NCF (1996) highlight creating a positive experience and minimising any risk to athletes as vital roles of the sports coach. These values are related more towards the role of participation coach’s whose initial principle is the athlete’s enjoyment of the sport leading to the continuation of participation. The emphasis is on the learning of skills and not competition success. There is no systematically controlled plan, unlike performance coaching, which involves detailed planning and monitoring of progress. Performance coaching attempts to control variables affecting performance in order to increase an athlete’s development and achieve long term goals usually connected with competition. It is the performance coach that is more likely to undertake the management of several specialist disciplines highlighted by Lyle (1999). For this reason, performance coaching is the more complex process and the process that researchers have found difficulties in producing an accurate framework or model for. A coaching model should provide a simplified representation of the structure and function of the process (Lyle, 1999). However, this is where the problem for researchers occurs because it is the simplifying of such a complex process. This essay will look at the original model of the coaching process from Fairs (1987). The model will be analysed and its strengths and weaknesses discussed whilst comparing it to other models of the coaching process, which have been developed since.

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Fairs (1987) model of the coaching process (figure 1) is a model for coaching as opposed to of coaching. This means the model is not based on empirical research into expert practice but instead is a more idealistic representation. The model is constructed through the application of assumptions accentuating a teaching and episodic approach. It is based on four characteristics highlighted by Fairs (1987). The first of these is that the model is dynamic meaning that the process constantly changes and the different actions of the process influence and relate to each other. The model is organised as one step follows another. ...

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