I have been coaching part time for about 5 years which is far too short to be any sort of authority. However here are a few thoughts. GENERAL EXPERIENCE The first group I taught after qualifying as 'Instructor' were 6 people who had been 'rejected' from our club and wanted to improve to the standard where they would be accepted - in 6 sessions! I made no guarantees, but provided a standard plan covering the basic areas - 1 holding the racquet, service, return of service 3 Forehand and Backhand strokes (as they were called then) push, whip, tap. 4 footwork, moving around court 5 putting it all together 6 Level and mixed doubles strategy. The exercises I used were mainly those from my BA of E 'Instructors Award' manual with tips gleaned from the coaches and other members of my course. How successful was it? Well they said they enjoyed the course, 2 I never heard of again, 2 joined another club and 2 were 'allowed back' the following season. The second group I taught was through the local college. The remit was to coach 18 people on 3 courts for one term, 12 nights, each 2 hours. I was told that the group had been coming to the previous courses for 3 years. I wondered how good they would be, and whether they had been over coached. When I got there I found that the people on the course had not been coached at all, they were unable to get courts locally and used the 'course' as a club. Previous coaches had done no coaching! In this group's case I had to be sure they wanted coaching. So I gave them a simple questionnaire and this showed that 16 wanted coaching but they were mostly not highly motivated. All gave 'social reasons' prominence. I gave them a written plan covering the 12 sessions which basically expanded the course above. I coached for 1.5 hours and then let them play for the other half hour and provided notes on what we had covered. All seemed to go well for 3 weeks then one of them came up and said they had decided among themselves that they wanted more play! So I readjusted the coaching to 1 hour coaching 1 hour play. This seemed to satisfy the majority. Those who wanted more coaching I fitted into the second hour on an add hoc basis. Measure of success? I asked them at the end of the course how successful they thought there improvement had been. All except 2 (who had only come for 'fun') felt they had improved and some thought they had improved 'greatly'. In nearly every case I would agree with their assessment except the degree of improvement was less - they may have been letting me off and I felt a little disappointed I had not done better. Several courses I have run since I have come away with this feeling or at least wanting to be objectively sure that those attending (including me) understood where they had improved and what to do next. SELF ASSESSMENT Recently I have been on the receiving end of coaching - 'Coach Modules', and the Advanced Coach, Ray Learney, coaches at all levels including juniors to county and international level. His approach is give 'league' and above people self assessment forms covering all areas of play. They include some areas that don't often appear, for example; motivation, time available for badminton, fitness and 'rate of efficiency of your xxxxx stroke'. This last measure is quite a useful concept: you imagine someone better than you that you know fairly well and then rate yourself on a scale of 1 - 10 against them (for each stroke and aspect of the game). Furthermore you decide what is realistically achievable during the coaching period. The forms allow reassessment at the end of the coaching period and help to emphasise the students' responsibilities for their own real improvement. CONCLUSION This form filling is serious stuff - probably for real achievers only. However the point of all of the above examples is that managing motivation, expectation, and sense of achievement is an important part of the course for participants and coaches. How you do it will vary with the situation. It may be that the students gratefulness (hopefully!) and keeping your own notes on the 'before and after' skills will be sufficient for this course. (What is more, in the current British 'National Vocational Qualification' climate these notes will count towards any further qualifications.) Best of luck! I would be glad to know what happens in other countries particularly Malaysia, Indonesia, China, etc. I've heard that the coaching style can be more aggressive. Regards, David ---------------------------------------------------------------- taken from the badminton mailing list, 5JUN95. Posted by David Bartlett (db5328@ggr.co.uk)