THE ART of COACHING and the SCIENCE of PERCEPTUAL LEARNING

There was a time when I prided myself in being able to walk into any fencing hall or competition and immediately recognise good coaching.  Maybe just from the sound of the coach and fencer’s blades connecting sharply or the joy of watching amazing footwork.  I could hear it or see it once and do it.  Yeah baby, I was good, well on the way to becoming great!  Except, I wasn’t looking at good coaching, I was looking at what was good according to how I had been coached to coach.  I began to realise there was a problem with my naive level of analysis when I started to take fencers to international events.  The game I’d been taught to coach was not the game I was seeing in front of me.  It was like being brought up on a strict diet of classical music and hearing jazz for the first time.  At the time I didn’t know why that difference existed, but once I’d noticed, I couldn’t stop noticing.