Labours of Sport Coaching: The Science and Art of Coaching, Motivation, and Self-Determination

ACCESS MY NEW PUBLICATION: Challenges-and-opportunities-for-community-sport-coach-development-1.pdf When we talk about coach development, most roads lead to the same familiar places: NGB awards, scientific theory, and on the job learning. These are of course valuable, but they're also predictable (or 'samey-samey' as I like to put it), and keep coaches learning within the same narrow c...

WATCH ME PRESENT AT UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING & SPORTSCOTLANDCOACHING SYMPOSIUM 18TH NOVEMBER 2025. REGISTER FOR FREE BELOW. | University of Stirling & sportscotland Coaching Symposium In the small corner of motivational psychology for coaching, self-determination theory reigns supreme for its modern and empirically backed view of athlete behaviour and environmental supports. So much so that...

WATCH ME PRESENT AT UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING & SPORTSCOTLANDCOACHING SYMPOSIUM 18TH NOVEMBER 2025. REGISTER FOR FREE BELOW. | Universityof Stirling & sportscotland Coaching Symposium   In this episode I’m joined by Professor Alan Chu to discusshis recent paper looking at the intersectionality of race, gender, and skill level as potential determinants for the way individuals experience the co...

CALL TO ACTION: Follow, rate, and share the show! When you plan, deliver, and reflect on your coaching practice, you may not recognise that your beliefs and behaviours can be traced back to higher order paradigms of thought, playing out at the various metaphysical levels. In this episode I seek to increase your awareness by offering examples of some (not all) coaching paradigms, breaking each one...

CALL TO ACTION: Follow, rate, and share the show! In this episode I play with the notion of free will being an illusion in a fully deterministic world, and what this would mean for how coaches treat athletes and themselves. My thoughts are based on neurobiological and cultural arguments presented in Robert Sapolsky's fascinating book ' Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will',...

CALL TO ACTION: Follow, rate, and share the show!   In this episode I offer strategies for supporting players’ three basic psychological needs during each part of a matchday, from when they first arrive to pregame preparations to half time talks to side line behaviour in itself. Opportunities for heightened autonomy, competence, and relatedness are everywhere during competitions, as are restrictio...

CALL TO ACTION: Follow, rate, and share the show! Welcome to the third installment of episodes zooming in on practical challenges associated with delivering coaching that asks questions of our capacity and desire to support athletes' sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. In this episode I discuss the trick topic of managing group size. Tune in to learn why we may act differently depe...

Read my new THE Campus article!: Why academics should adopt a podcaster’s mindset | THE Campus Learn, Share, Connect Traditional coach education can often feel stale and predictable in its delivery, which limits its effectiveness. Research evidence from myself and others is making a case for coach educator to diversify their methods. In this episode I provide some creative devices to cultivate fre...

Read my new article on podcasting for academics!: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/why-academics-should-adopt-podcasters-mindset Ever feel like right now isn't the time for athlete input when coaching, or you don't have enough time to give it, or other outside conditions are just not right? Prefer to give autonomy during particular times in a practice session, or even blocks in...

Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter: https://laboursofsportcoaching.beehiiv.com/subscribe In the first of three episodes looking at practical dilemmas coaches face when 'doing the job of coaching', I discuss the place, role, and management of competition across training and matchday environments, specifically within youth sport from a self determination theory perspective...

Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter: Subscribe| Labours of Sport Coaching - The Self-Determined Coach This week we're going back to one of the podcast's first, and most interesting conversations, with Professor Cesar Torres, a sport philosopher and historian from SUNY Brockport university in the USA. Cesar offers an alternative way of viewing and using competition when wo...

Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter: Subscribe| Labours of Sport Coaching - The Self-Determined Coach Community sport coaches are lacking structure on how to fulfil their roles, and there are consequences for how they behave and the motivations they develop for coaching. This issue affects coaches and their participants, and the problem reproduces as an effect of individual, team...

Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter: Subscribe| Labours of Sport Coaching - The Self-Determined Coach When we turn up to coach, we bring all of who we are as coaches and people, including our personality, emotions, and biography. These factors drive our behaviour, therefore understanding the mechanisms is key to making progress in our behaviour. Tune in for a deep dive on both in...

Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter: Subscribe| Labours of Sport Coaching - The Self-Determined Coach Ever considered what a coach's philosophy can and perhaps should include beyond sport specific knowledge? We use the term philosophy so much in coaching that it means everything and nothing all at once, and in this episode I sit down with Dr Mark Partington from Edge Hill Univers...

Feedback if LoSC impacts your practice: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/rJEqYsDpCm It is solid advice to nurture your athletes' internal drivers through autonomy-supportive coaching for sustainable, long term motivation and a range of positive benefits. But there are times when short term impacts matter too, and situations and personalities call for a responsibly managed controlling coaching appro...

Feedback if LoSC impacts your practice: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/rJEqYsDpCm Nowadays we're almost told what the correct coaching behaviours are. Particularly where motivational behaviours are concerned. But what happens when popular coaching styles clash with your authentic, and most effective, self? In this episode I argue the case for behaviour control, not change, and champion the co...

Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter: https://laboursofsportcoaching.beehiiv.com/subscribe In this episode I'm joined by Professor of Sport Psychology Adam Nicholls from University of Hull to consider the complimentary role sport psychologists can play in coach-led processes, shining a light on where the blame lies in cases of disagreement from both sides of the fence. We also cha...

Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter: Subscribe| Labours of Sport Coaching - The Self-Determined Coach For this episode I'm joined by Professor Sophia Jowett to discuss what it takes for coaches to build functional, satisfying and effective coach-athlete relationships, based on Sophia's famous '3Cs+1' empirical framework developed across decades of research. We chat about the rela...

Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter: Subscribe| Labours of Sport Coaching - The Self-Determined Coach Coach observations come with benefits for aiding behavioural understanding and improvement in coaching, but we don't discuss their innate problems enough. Yet we seem to rely on observational data or perception at an increasing rate for coach education and sense making. Coach...

Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter: Subscribe| Labours of Sport Coaching - The Self-Determined Coach If a coach is controlling but shows high relatedness towards an athlete, does the relatedness buffer the control? Not quite, it turns out. In this episode I chat to Elisa Lefever, Doctoral Assistant at Gent University, about the intriguing cautionary findings of a recent paper de...

Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter: Subscribe| Labours of Sport Coaching - The Self-Determined Coach Learning more about what you should do as a coach should directly help improve your behaviour, right? Not quite. More information on your what, without knowing you why and how, leads to frustration for coaches, their organisation, and propagates a false formula that sets coaches...

Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter: Subscribe| Labours of Sport Coaching - The Self-Determined Coach This episode explores the psychological needs of coaches in sport, prioritising coaches' own sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. I discusses how these needs impact coaches' performance and their inclination towards supporting athletes' needs by extension....

Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter: Subscribe | Labours of Sport Coaching - The Self-Determined Coach In this episode I chat with Dadi Rafnsson about his latest research working with football clubs to establish a position specific 5 Cs psychosocial language for football coaches and players to use to tangibly bring psychology alive, as a precursor to nurturing their psychosocial...

Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter: Subscribe | Labours of Sport Coaching - The Self-Determined Coach In this short episode I tackle the conundrum of advocating for athletes' autonomy within the coaching process, when the coaching process is orchestrated - and controlled - by the coach. Even when it feels like athlete choice, it’s ultimately about the coach’s agenda, right? Expl...

Sign up to my FREE motivational psychology newsletter: Subscribe | Labours of Sport Coaching - The Self-Determined Coach In this episode, I introduce relatedness support as the lowest hanging fruit* (with an asterisk to be explained) of the three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Relatedness support is intrinsic (no pun intended) to all functional, effective coach...