I have been seeing the idea of a “Coaching Philosophy” in many different places in the last year. It came up in a conversation I had with another coach last summer. Coaching philosophy was discussed in a book on coaching children that I was reading a few months ago. RIT discussed the idea of a coaching philosophy in his blog a few weeks ago.

At the time of the first conversation I had about a coaching philosophy, I thought that it was worth giving some thought. I have been coaching for a long time, but I have never considered what my coaching was about at a personal level – I had been too busy doing and not busy thinking. I attacked the idea with a few notes in my coaching notebook and some discussions with other coaches, but the notes were mostly false starts and elements of ideas, and not a philosophy themselves.

This weekend when I re-read my notes, I realized I was working from the particular and ignoring the general. Everything I had written revolved around, or pointed towards, one central idea:

Being a fencer is a process, and not a result.

When a student comes to me for lessons and tells me that he or she wants to earn an “A” (or “B”, or "C”, or what have you) it raises a red flag to me. The student whose goal is to earn a letter or a certain finish has already put a road block in their path by looking at the end result – not what it takes to get that result.

It is important to have goals, and it is important – in my role as a coach – to help a student set goals. Some of these goals are going to be concrete, external, and measurable. Some of these goals are going to be amorphous, internal, and will be recognized as achieved only after the fact. To focus solely on the concrete goals of rating and placement is to ignore the more important (and longer lasting) achievements of skills and attitudes.

It is laughably transparent that good fencers concentrate on being good fencers first, and winning tournaments second. Yet, every day I see fencers reverse these priorities, and suffer for it.

It is the role of the coach to contribute to the fencing process in each fencer, the to best of the coach’s ability.

I use the word “contribute” on purpose. It reminds me that I am not in charge of the student (and neither is the student in charge of me). It reminds me that I am not the one fencing, the student is.

This word “contribute” also implies that I am not the only source of coaching information. It puts an onus on the student to be more than an empty bucket I must fill. The student has an active role to play in the process of being a fencer. In other ways, however, this statement expands my role from a teacher of fencing actions to the role of leader, mentor, and confidant. I cannot just teach the hand or the legs; it is my responsibility to teach the whole person, the whole fencer. I am not just a teacher of fencing actions, but a teacher of fencers.

Finally:

The contribution of the coach changes as the fencer changes, or as fencing changes.

When I was competing, my best coach was also my worst coach. After teaching me the technical skills in the weapon I was fencing, the coach never expanded the lesson to include the tactical elements that I was failing to master. The coach never recognized that my needs as a fencer had changed in the time that we were together, and that it was his job – as the coach – to change his training to suit. Eventually, I realized that my time was done with this coach, and moved on to another.

Even when a student’s game is complete, there is still a role for the coach. When I read books about tennis, I am struck by the fact that great players have coaches with them until the end of their careers. What could a coach possibly teach someone like Andre Agassi or Stefi Graf about a game that they obviously excel at already? Frankly, the coach can do very little mechanical or tactical work for a player at this level. Yet, the coach still has a role to play as an extra set of eyes, a reminder about their opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, an emotional safety net, and any of the hundred other things that an athlete needs at the top of the game. The coach becomes a partner in the sport, rather than a leader, and that is the role I try to take with my most experienced students.

However, even at the highest levels of the sport, the athlete may need to make a change to their game. The recent timing changes in foil are a good example. My experienced foilists needed to change their game to adapt. I had to revert to teaching hands and feet again, at least for a time.

I think these three simple precepts cover everything I need to do as a coach. When I read these statements, I see that they shape me - as a coach - and shape my students, as well. I do not expect my students to simply take in information and regurgitate it on the strip. The students I have enjoyed teaching the most are the ones that brought something more to the sport than a blind acceptance of what I was trying to teach. Those are the students that understood the process of fencing, and who continue to grow as fencers, even though I may not be teaching some of them anymore. That is how it should be.

AE