A salutogenic approach to talent development, with Andrew Kirkland

Andy K (: 00:00

It's basically how we cope with life, how we navigate the river of life. And that's to do with having the coping mechanisms and the wider social support to cope with the challenges that life throws at us. And well,

Sense of coherence looks at three components.

Mark Carroll (: 00:20

Hi everyone, in today's episode of Labours of Sports Coaching I spoke to Dr. Andrew Kirkland who is a lecturer in sports coaching at the University of Stirling. Today's topic was based on a recent book chapter that Andrew contributed in his field as an academic and as someone who's a fairly accomplished

coach developer, having spent many years working within British cycling. Andrew looks at a health-based approach to talent development, but not in a way that is overly safe, not in a way that's, you know, in the sense that we're looking for

excuses away from challenge in a way that actually leans into challenge, but considers the wider life course that is led an athlete who is in front of you to be the way they are and to use that both from the perspective of how we can look after what they lack, but also to offer a base point on which we can challenge them to push further, okay, in such a way that is truly transformational. So an amazing conversation, definitely one.

that gets you thinking hard that isn't necessarily a how to, but it is a why type debate. So let's get into it.

Mark Carroll (: 01:57

So Andy, how are you? It's great to have you here.

Andy K (: 01:59

I'm doing good, I'm doing good. I've got the dog sitting at my feet, keeping my feet warm, so...

Mark Carroll (: 02:05

Great, fantastic. If we hear the yelp as they say, then we know you have maybe moved the runway, so we need to be careful. Yeah, so we're doing a chat today about a recent book chapter that you contributed that I was fortunate enough to get a chance to read, and it was really, really interesting looking at this solutogenic approach to talent development. Now, I think maybe a nice starting point to this might be why do we feel the need to have another conversation about larger approaches to talent development? What's your?

Andy K (: 02:09

Yes, yes, so I'll have to sit still.

Mark Carroll (: 02:33

What was the sort of motivation behind bringing up a conversation that people might say has been chunged up quite often already?

Andy K (: 02:40

Well, I think that the central premise of the book was coming from the editors, Andy Borey and Emily Ryle, is that the systems to develop talent currently in the UK are not effective. They're not working. And I believe the reason I was asked to contribute is that I'm seen as a voice.

hopefully of reason, but also a voice of dissent and saying, these are the types of things we need to be focusing on in talent development. And the conversation went along the lines of, well, what can you write about, Andy? And solutagenics, it's a really, really big word, but it's

It's the framework that I use to frame all my research and all my thinking. It's not an esoteric academic sounding word to me. It actually embodies my purpose in sport. And solitogenics is a really quite a straightforward word, even though it fancy. And it simply poses the question, what are the origins of health and what makes

people healthy. And what we've typically got in sport at the moment is a pathogenic orientation in which there's a negativity bias. It's kind of what do we do when things go wrong or how do we prevent bad things from happening in sport. this is reflected in the resources that are gone into safeguarding, how probably many

coaches feel restricted by health and safety guidelines and such and it's almost that there's an authoritative discourse and saying this is the way you must coach you must coach under these health and safety guidelines everyone must go on a safeguarding coach to prevent harm from happening.

And of course, the audience will think, well, of course, these things are really, really important. So we don't want bad things to happen in sport. And I would say, absolutely. But the nature of being human and the human life course, well, we all experience negative things, bad things happening. And sport is often a really difficult

environment too. And we can't necessarily wrap young people up in cotton wool and safeguard them from every harm because the consequence of that is that many will not develop the coping strategies to support them with the rest of their lives. So if we look at the central messages like coaching

the athlete, athlete-centered coaching, and we want to develop people in and through sport, so beyond sport. So we use these experience in sport to develop discipline, team ethic, work ethic, all these positive sorts of things. But if the challenge isn't there, if the risk isn't there, if there's not autonomy given to young people and so on,

and they don't experience some of the challenges that they'll face in later life, then sports probably not going to be achieving these really positive things we're setting out to achieve from them. And I think by being overly protective and taking this pathogenic orientation to stop harm and illness and everything happening,

we're actually opening young people up to greater risk in their future. They're unable to cope with the challenges that they may face in later life. And I think you're a university lecturer, I'm a university lecturer. And something we all tend to be speaking about right now is how undergraduate students, when they come onto programs,

aren't prepared to be autonomous learners, they're not prepared to do what we expect of them at university. There's not those motivations there, engagement and the prevalence of poor mental health is unprecedented in society in fact, but and we're seeing that at university too. So

I think we need to think about how we develop performance in a holistic and integrative way, but also a realistic way to recognize that Kirkland's three laws of life is shit happens. I hope that doesn't bugger up with your algorithm. So shit happens, life's not fair and the goalposts change.

Mark Carroll (: 07:10

No, it's fine.

Andy K (: 07:16

That's the reality of your life, that's the reality of my life. And certainly as I've progressed through life, where adversity happens, normally it's just a shrug at the shoulders and up, that's kind of normal, I would expect that. Whereas I would suggest that lots of people really struggle with challenges in life to an unprecedented level. And part of it is...

perhaps wrapping young people in cotton wool in life, not pushing them hard enough in school

not preparing them for failure because you're from a football footballing background and what's the prevalence of young footballers who go on to an academy program at 13 year old transferring into the professional game probably I think the statistic is about 0.001 percent of these players will make it so inevitably

the vast majority will not necessarily achieve their dreams. So if we look at perhaps football environments, the question is, are these environments healthy for these young people? Are they actually preparing them for that failure, but allowing them to believe that success in performance terms is a

Mark Carroll (: 08:17

Hmm.

Andy K (: 08:34

achievable. So I suppose that's the central premise. That's a long-winded way of saying we do need to look at performance environments and talent development environments to look at what we're actually setting out to achieve and if we're being successful in doing so. And I would suggest that overarching evidence would point to

Mark Carroll (: 08:38

Hmm.

Andy K (: 08:56

They're not really working for anyone.

Mark Carroll (: 08:58

But what's quite interesting that you mention that, just when you say health, a health-based view in coaching, that the first thing that we spring to mind is about actually wrapping people up further. But then actually what you've then moved on to say actually is that we require a base point of challenge alongside health because it was interesting that I read the book chapter, because you move, it's not that you do it, I know you do this deliberately, but it moves from kind of speaking about looking after athletes.

to also looking at well what do the top performance athletes have and they have had challenge and difficulty and then there's a bit of batting forward but is it worth the potential risk to your overall health to get to that level? So can we speak about this maybe as a view on performance and what a high performance person or athlete is, where not we need to separate those things because it was just, there is a lot of moving between different viewpoints and attention that's really healthy in my opinion but I could imagine for some people that could be confused by.

going but health is looking after them health is but then it's that as well so

Andy K (: 09:59

I think it comes down to how we look at stress. So stress is the key word. What is stress? And we can look at it from a biological perspective and we can look at it from a psychological perspective. I would prefer to look at them together. As in, we've got a bucket that holds the amount of stress we can cope with. We can...

solutigenics talks about sense of coherence. It's basically how we cope with life, how we navigate the river of life. And that's to do with having the coping mechanisms and the wider social support to cope with the challenges that life throws at us. And well,

Sense of coherence looks at three components. Manageability, so that would be ability to manage stress in the challenges that life throws at us. Really simplistic level comprehensibility, how we understand the world, how we make sense of it, how we understand the environment we're in.

And meaningfulness. So that's almost the motivational component. So what continues to motivate young people and even high performers in that environment and what we often find is where the meaningfulness is contingent on performance as in winning.

when that disappears or when it doesn't happen, there's a deficit.

which many athletes cannot cope with. So outwardly we may see Olympians that have taken their meaningfulness from developing their whole identity around sport and then it ends. So what we tend not to talk about is what happens afterwards or what's

Adam Peaty is a good example who's talked about his mental health and asking the question of himself, is it worth it? Do I want to continually keep on pushing this? Now, I don't know Adam from Adam. I don't know his story. But the question is, has that been a healthy environment for him or could we

Mark Carroll (: 11:52

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Andy K (: 12:15

Take a fresh look at swimming environments and see even for the likes of Olympic champions, can we make it a little bit better by focusing on what makes people healthy and then empowering them to deal with the wider stressors around life, especially if that meaning disappears through not being able to achieve performance success.

Mark Carroll (: 12:39

So I want to come back to that. We'll stick on that as well, you've brought it up. Because one of the things I was wanting to ask you around this was that it seemed like initially the conversation was set up about talent development in the context of youth athletes. But then I think that's quite a vivid example that you've just given there with Adam Petey. Because I had the question, can a solitogenic approach still, you know, can develop in a sense of cohesion and can doing these things from a health-based view, is it too late for senior athletes to

to get the use out of this if you attribute so much importance to the life course and how that flows alongside, know, within the river analogy perhaps alongside the developing athlete, I wondered where we were there.

Andy K (: 13:22

It's a really good question and when someone says it's a really good question usually means they've not got an answer to it. It is an interesting question. I don't believe it is ever too late to support human beings in positive ways in their environment. I'm even thinking back. I need to be careful of

Mark Carroll (: 13:28

It's just as interesting. Yeah.

Andy K (: 13:45

what I say here to protect identities, but I was sitting in a changing room one afternoon and I was speaking with a multiple Olympic medal-win champion, one of the top athletes we've had in the country, about a subject that we were both passionate in and that was coffee.

Mark Carroll (: 14:06

and

Andy K (: 14:06

Because you know I like my coffee and I like to speak about it. And one of the senior coaches came in and said, what's that got to do with performance? Why is that important? And because of the power dynamic there, I didn't tell him to get stuffed and tell him what I was actually thinking because that would have been problematic.

Mark Carroll (: 14:10

Haha.

Andy K (: 14:25

But the reality was that we should be encouraging athletes, regardless of what level they're at, is to develop an identity and develop meaningfulness in life through things that are not contingent on their performance on the world stage or even at the under 13s in Stenhouse Muir. We need to set environments where

We encourage people to do other things and develop meaning in life from other things outside of sport. So when the inevitable happens, which it happens to every athlete, whether they've been Olympic champion or maybe on the local football team or the local cycling team, failure is inevitable for everyone as is death. There's got to be something next. There's got to be greater meaning in life.

So we need to think about that in terms of how we set up performance environments and talent environments.

Mark Carroll (: 15:22

So building on that then, we set up, is solitogenic about reaction to adversity or is it and or is it about preparing for success? I was trying to figure out when I was looking at this frame and how we can maybe orientate our thinking towards one way or another. Are we taking a positive view on things and if it's health based is it about success or is it actually about as I say building the resources so you maintain a self-behagen across transitional moments perhaps?

Andy K (: 15:49

I think it can be both. I'm trying to avoid going into deeper philosophical underpinnings. Because I suppose you can have your cake and eat it. So you can develop a solutogenic environment, but still have resources in place to deal with when

Mark Carroll (: 15:50

And it could be both, because I've seen two things, you know?

Andy K (: 16:15

things go wrong. It's a health-based model, it's not a sport-based model and it's not been applied much in sports. So there's only about two papers being written on the subject. One was I think a German study and it looked at the sense of coherence. So they measured sense of coherence

quantitatively, that's a word I hate saying, quantitatively is harder than solitigenics for me. So they measured sense of coherence quantitatively and found that a high sense of coherence was protective in terms of reducing prevalence of injury and such.

Mark Carroll (: 16:40

Hehehe.

how did I do against that one? God, I've been practicing this one.

Andy K (: 16:56

But coming back to Kirkland's three laws, shit happens, goalposts change, life's not fair. Most people are going to get injured at some time in their career. So it's not saying let's invest all the resource on making sure people don't get injured because they will. We still need strength and conditioning coaches, physiotherapists, doctors, surgeons, all these types of things when things do go wrong because they do.

Mark Carroll (: 17:02

Hmm.

Andy K (: 17:20

So, well the medical philosopher Anton Antonovsky who developed I'm thinking about it. I would say it's a thinking orientation. We can call it a framework but it's an orientation, it's a way of thinking, it's a rather than being biased by the negative which humans tend to be we're all like a mone.

Mark Carroll (: 17:31

Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Andy K (: 17:45

and we focus on what's gone wrong in the day rather than what's gone right in the day. The orientation is basically to say what's gone right in the day and how do we use that to develop healthier environments.

Mark Carroll (: 17:58

Just I think that could, I mean, it got me even as we were thinking, I'm thinking as you're replying there, it made me consider how we are when people with real style. I mean, sometimes there's a philosophy of thought that if still hasn't, still is not, hasn't, still can't happen in the presence of pressure and stress is it still. So it's kind of like, this is almost why we have to teach the movements, teach the athlete, but also teach the resources as well and try and have equal.

equal, you know, comparable standards either side of that. But I would. Yeah. Yeah. Jump back in. Yeah.

Andy K (: 18:29

Can I bring that back? So you've talked

about skill and a lot of the chapters about my life story and how I've developed in sport. And I'll tell you about an incident yesterday. It sounds a bit funny, but it really takes a life course approach as well. So I had just had a really nice round of golf.

It had finished all square on the 18th against an old mate and stuff and I won't go into the details of the game of golf but I had a lovely time and then I've got a new golf cart at the end of the round when no one's there I had to fold up and put in a little slot my old golf cart and that might seem quite an innocuous thing

But I was wrestling this golf cart like it was a giant squid or something or a giant octopus. I couldn't fold the damn thing. I couldn't get it down into the shape. The last time I tried, I checked my finger and I had a big bruise. And it really hurt. And I was besides myself. I was really, really upset. The question is,

why was I so upset at the inability to fold up a golf cart? and it probably comes from my childhood and beyond in which I'm undiagnosed dyspraxic I couldn't tie my shoelaces until I was eight and some really basic skills that you might look at and go that's easy and go dit dit dit and watch the YouTube videos and I guided it in literally

Mark Carroll (: 19:39

Hmm.

Andy K (: 19:59

10 seconds, it was 10 seconds and it was really easy. But I couldn't solve that puzzle. It was really, really hard and it brought about a lot of distress. It's reminded me back to these days when I couldn't tie my laces and how frustrating and upsetting that was. But when we think about skill acquisition, maybe if there was a coach on hand, a coach

of how to fold a golf cart together, the immediate reaction would be to come up and show me how to do it and help me do it and put your arm around me and say, there there Andy, it's all right.

But the nature of me and the nature of the beast is that I need to learn to work things out for myself. So part of that frustration, it's not nice, it's not pleasant. But I went away and watched the YouTube video 10 times, worked out a way that it will work. Still struggling to picture it in my head because I don't see these things. So that any intervention from someone to help me

Mark Carroll (: 20:55

Hmm.

Andy K (: 20:59

would not necessarily have helped me learn do it myself. I need to be allowed to explore and solve the problem for myself and then I can get quite good at it. That's part of my story is that and I talked about it in the chapter I was in the yellow group at school which was for the low achievers in the class.

Mark Carroll (: 21:12

Hmm.

Andy K (: 21:24

where people tend to have a low expectation and we know from the wider literature that children who go into lower sets at school tend never to emerge from them. They don't come out because people have got low expectations for them. And I strongly believe based on my experiences

Mark Carroll (: 21:36

Hmm.

Andy K (: 21:46

That's quite hard for me to say as a scientist based on my experience, I believe. But given the right environment, most people have got a great deal of potential to do really, really well. So if we look at school, school didn't work for me and school doesn't work for an awful lot of people because it's the wrong type of learning environment for them. And it tends to

disadvantage those who we might label neurodiverse, so dyslexic, dyspraxic and wider learning needs. The question for me there is actually is the classroom set up in a way that allows teachers to differentiate for these different needs? Does it allow the teacher to create a healthy environment that allows different people to develop at their own rates?

Or is it almost a Bordusian system of power and control in which we're all expected to assimilate with a way of being and doing? If we listen to someone like Noam Chomsky talking about such things, he would say it's a Bordusian system of power and control. So we're not allowing young people to

Mark Carroll (: 22:52

Hmm.

Andy K (: 22:55

prosper right now in the classroom. So people like me who may be a really slow learner or may not be able to process information in the same way as maybe the teacher learned to process information, much in the same way as many coaches learn to coach based on their own experiences.

But their own experiences, particularly if they've been successful at their sport, may not be reflective of, I'll say people like me who have struggled with every time a shoelace is a time a shoelace is was a big achievement. Other things that people see as quite straightforward have been big achievements for me in life.

So that from a coaching perspective, we need to think about who's facing us, what their life experiences have involved, what challenges the face and the best way to support the individuals. But in a group environment, we've not got time and resource to focus in depth at absolutely everyone.

unrealistic but we can adapt our approaches so we're more embracing of different people's needs. So you may have one or two people that are really good performers that potentially can go on to a talent development pathway but for the majority you want to create

Mark Carroll (: 24:17

Hmm.

Andy K (: 24:30

an enjoyable environment where they want to come back and continue to play sport, depending on what context we're in. Can you achieve everything for everyone? I think you can.

Mark Carroll (: 24:35

Hmm.

Hmm.

There's two things that you're making me think about there, right? We can maybe touch on each of these separately. I'm quite keen to ask what your advice would be on this. You mentioned about maybe where some people have got a more straightforward trajectory of success. So let's take football for example. A lot of youth academy's in football are ran by ex-pros and lot of decision making around talent development is often run by people whose very life course would suggest quite a linear view on how they move. Not necessarily they wouldn't say it's linear, but.

You know, it's almost a question of should an academy be set up with the view in mind of who doesn't make it rather with the view in mind on who does and trying to reverse engineer it because oftentimes it can lead itself to practices where environment has been set up based on the successful athlete. It can be set up in such a way that maybe unbeknown to the person hasn't went through the life course that they were unsuccessful. They may be putting in place environmental contingents that

would allow for success despite them, not because of them. Could always wonder if should we be looking at the kid who doesn't make it and thinking about what their life course has influenced and figure out how we could catch more people working out of that approach than perhaps working back from a view on success that's alien to some of these other aspects of.

Andy K (: 25:45

you

I'm still,

Absolutely, it still leaves quite complicated questions to address if we were to go down that direction. Now I had a conversation with a head of performance at a top league club in Scotland not so long ago and I'm having a conversation like this and again I'm being a bit cautious in how much I say but my first question is

Right, we know that most players won't succeed through this pathway. What's the point of your pathway? Was the question I asked, and why are you doing what you're doing? Can we not do something to improve it? And.

Mark Carroll (: 26:32

Mmm.

People do make that assumption, don't they? It's kind of just accepted, 1 % make it, so let's just continue to create an environment where 1 % will make it. Maybe, we need to think about that. That's a really bad return. It's a bit funny.

Andy K (: 26:50

Well it depends so if you think if you've got a relatively good academy which for a Scottish academy I think it'll cost in the region of 400,000 pounds a year to fund quite a basic academy in Scotland. Imagine over five years you have one player that succeeds.

Mark Carroll (: 27:06

Really better.

Andy K (: 27:13

and provides a return on investment of 20 million pounds for the club. Is the return on investment worthwhile? I would suggest the board thinks so. So that's one angle to look at it as the business imperative. The other angle is that, well, if some clubs don't do it,

The other clubs will just suck up the players and then they'll have even less chance of transferring players through the pathway into their first team and saving the first team money because Scottish football is a low resource environment. Now, if I had a magic wand and headed up the

SFA for example, there's lots of things that I would do but probably the first thing would be that I would stop the academy structure. If we look to say the models of football in Scandinavia or Iceland or whatever, many of the clubs are community based.

If we think a typical young player in a football academy might have 90 minutes each way in a car to get to training. So as soon as training is finished, they're driven home again, which is pretty typical. And that often means that to be successful in football in Scotland, your parents need a car and they need the time to be able to

drive their children to and from training. that precludes quite a large demographic, especially those from deprived socio-economic communities. So success is contingent on having a car.

Mark Carroll (: 28:41

Hmm.

And is it healthy as well? Andy, for example, I think it's quite commonplace. I don't think it's necessarily just Scotland, but across UK anyway, like where there are academy midweek games that finish at 10 o'clock at night. Now if we then balance that with this sort of looking at holistically what else an athlete requires, these are kids then that are going to school that it's more than with little sleep because of things that they commute, the wider regional structures and how they have to move between things.

A solutogenic approach would say no to that then, wouldn't it? Because it seems to value that this does matter, sleep for other activities matters, so we have to put that at the forefront.

Andy K (: 29:31

Absolutely or to an extent I would say if it's once a week then that's probably fine but if it's training and a late night game and we know that hard training in the evening disrupts your sleep young people need their sleep and if they don't get it

Mark Carroll (: 29:38

Hmm, that's true.

Andy K (: 29:51

there's physical and mental consequences for that lack of sleep it may impact on their engagement at school it may impact on their mood it may impact on their insulin response what what they eat when they need to eat it all different things and inevitably or invariably it impacts on brain development too so

from a solutogenic perspective, it would be how do we set up an environment where

sleep and the rest of the life of the children is considered when we're planning training and when we're planning competition. think if we did so, A, we would have more effective and better players who are more up for what they're doing, who enjoy what they do more.

Mark Carroll (: 30:27

Hmm.

Andy K (: 30:41

participation rates would go up and so on. The easy solution for me and it's maybe a bit idealistic is going back to the models of development which didn't really exist when I was younger which is going back a while but I'm from a town called Musselburgh

just outside Edinburgh. we had Musselburgh, since we're talking about football, we had Musselburgh Windsor where the better players in the town played. Lots of Musselburgh Windsor players went to play Scottish league football. They would, if they had done well there, they would go to Hutchey Vale and other top development clubs.

Mark Carroll (: 31:10

Hmm.

Andy K (: 31:23

there would probably be a bloke who would drive a carload of them up to training so that there was a real tight bond between the players that made those transitions too. Now of course there's risk involved in that too, all we need to do is look at what happened at Celtic and the safeguarding report from the SFA what was it four or five years ago.

Mark Carroll (: 31:35

Hmm.

Andy K (: 31:47

pretty. What's the word I'm looking for?

It wasn't pleasant to read, put it that way. So if we're looking at the solutogenic perspective, my question would be, how do we set up more effective community programs where players don't have to travel so much? And what's the mechanism from which everyone has the opportunity to move up to the next level should they have the talent?

Mark Carroll (: 31:53

Hmm

Hmm.

Andy K (: 32:13

but for those who enjoy the camaraderie, the developing the close friendships, all these types of things that are really important for youth sport. And that's where young people get their meaning from life. So if we bring it back to solitogenics, where does meaning come from? It comes from having tight social connections with your peers. That's a real teenage thing. It's really important to the development of

Mark Carroll (: 32:21

Hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Andy K (: 32:40

teenagers is that they have tight peer relationships. They're like bonds that you'll never form any other time in your life. There's exploration, there's risk taking, there's all these things, the normal development of a teenager. And we want to set environments where they can experience these things, make their own mistakes sometimes.

Mark Carroll (: 33:03

Hmm And I don't think it's really unpop I don't think it's really surprising to say like I mean my own experience as well I went through Academy systems and I still to this day know that the best experience of my life was playing with my friends and that was probably when my my love for football was as intrinsic as pure as ever could be I wonder with us with this conversation ever just one of the points you do make there around the community-based model like that's a bit it's a more radical view on how clubs could maybe

Clubs with high reach and resource could outsource to a degree. Like Hutchie Vale probably is a feeder club for another professional club. People might go back and forward to then you might even say why force players to play for... Hibs to actually play at Hibs, why not allow the players to play with somewhere else in Edinburgh or somewhere in Dunfermline or somewhere. But then obviously some people will say well some clubs would need more help in order to monitor that and then there's the whole would everyone be of a certain level in order that we're still then...

challenging the more talented players, but then you could say if you share it around you're going to get more talented players across this piece. It's funny one just in terms of how you could stretch it.

Andy K (: 34:07

I think where I would put a lot of resource into most developmental systems is support and parents and parental education. as you said, your most positive experiences were playing with your mates. Now, where dad is saying

If dad is a Jambul or a Hibbie or a Celtic fan or whatever and his young lad or daughter gets the opportunity to play for Celtic and when that's so intrinsic to the being of many people in central Scotland is still football for quite a proportion of the community.

then that pressure comes from parents saying, oh, you're playing for hearts now. And that the belief that because a 13 year old has made it to Hearts Academy, then they've got a good chance of playing for hearts as a professional footballer in six or seven years when the reality is very different. that's where the

Mark Carroll (: 35:13

Hmm.

Andy K (: 35:16

finding the balance between idealism and realism is kind of how do we manage parents in that environment? And if we've got, do we even want feeder clubs? We've got academy schools and we do have feeder clubs now, but they go to the professional clubs should they reach a particular level. I would probably say

Mark Carroll (: 35:20

Yeah

Hmm.

Andy K (: 35:39

there's no need for academy until someone's 16 or 17. Keep them in the feeder clubs, keep them have strong community-based clubs with first, second and third teams. So in the thirds you might have

Mark Carroll (: 35:54

Hmm.

Andy K (: 35:56

the guys that are never going to be a professional footballer but they go to be with their mates and they enjoy a game of football next level then you've got the levels up so that everyone's getting the opportunity to play with a level that's consistent with their ability but the chance to transition to another level should they have that potential

Mark Carroll (: 36:18

Yeah, I mean, so what I would like to do is bring a conversation back to what we can control this, suppose, then, because I know we're thinking quite idealistic at the moment here, but I don't want to let people off the hook that easily, because actually there are things, and I think what was so powerful about the model you proposed and the way that you constructed your argument in the book chapter was that at the local level, and I mean now there's coach to coach, we can do things here, again, across a longer piece, but we can have a level of influence.

Andy K (: 36:23

Mm.

Mm.

Mark Carroll (: 36:44

Now, of the things, and this might be a helpful segue into helping me understand more of the model, Alan, and how the model kind of sits and folds into itself. You'd mentioned, obviously, there's the three separate parts of meaningfulness in terms of what it means to you, comprehensibility, in terms of just really making sense of the environment, and then the manageability part. Now, there seemed to be the other half of the model was around resistance resources. Now,

about how we actually able to then kind of either retain or equalize or equilibrium again where we're faced with issues. Now, the question I wanted to ask you was, because you spoke about the importance with these things in mind, because you spoke about the importance of considering the life course of who's in front of us, do we actually, could we be counterproductive in how maybe the average coach may actually take on that advice? Because if you asked me to consider the life course,

someone I would look back to the things that tell me about why they can't do something which is important maybe because of a history of this or that but as a means of helping them cope and knows challenging moments should we not also be as part of the sort of resistance resources building out of the strengths that have developed over the life course as well because I would wonder if we are trying to not be pathogenic and deficit viewing as a coach

and how we solve solutions, how we bring solutions about from resource, should we also have a strength-based approach to all from that?

Andy K (: 38:14

Well, absolutely,

that's central to it. It's where people get their strength from, where they get their energy from. I think it's very difficult to move away from that negativity bias as well. I'm thinking of another example when I was working with a cycling coach in Manchester. So they were a community-based coach in Manchester. And what he said to me,

Mark Carroll (: 38:26

Mm.

Andy K (: 38:38

is really profound was I work with some really difficult kids here and their behaviors can be very problematic.

But what I do when I'm faced with these things is always to remind myself that I don't know what they've just experienced before they came to my session. the area in which he was coaching was well around the Etihad Stadium. So East Clayton and that sort of area of Manchester.

Mark Carroll (: 38:59

Hmm.

Hmm.

Andy K (: 39:12

It's really quite rough, there's gangs, there's gun crime, there's drugs, the area is one of the worst for gun crime in the UK. He had children coming from these communities into his sessions. He had to continually remind himself of their life courses, their challenges and sometimes...

their strengths as well. So it's to be understanding of some of the challenging behaviors, but to recognize that these young people have their own strengths too. I'm thinking of one guy in particular who was a really good BMX rider. I mean, exceptional, but he had never been in a formal club whatsoever.

Mark Carroll (: 39:41

Hmm.

Andy K (: 39:53

They didn't want him in the clubs anyway and it's not something his parents would take him to. It took money and he was quite hard to handle. And I was working with him as part of a youth outreach project and speaking with his mentor as well that's in well

Mark Carroll (: 39:54

Hmm.

Andy K (: 40:12

He has had a really difficult upbringing. I'm seeing remarkable leadership qualities. I'm speaking to him, he was about 14 or something. When I'm speaking to him, I'm speaking to him as an equal. He has a presence and he's got a way about it. There's something special about him. And his mentor said, yes, his brothers are major drug dealers in the area.

Mark Carroll (: 40:36

Hmm.

Andy K (: 40:36

So his brothers were probably leaders in the community as well, leaders in things that we would prefer them not to be leading in, probably good at financial management, leading others to get them to do what they wanted, performing at a high level in really unsalutory ways. But if you see that through a positive lens,

Mark Carroll (: 40:44

Mm.

Mmm.

Andy K (: 41:00

Well, what if we harness the strengths in this young lad to help him develop in and through sport and give him the best opportunities we can despite and in spite of his life course? What do we need to do? The reality is when you try to do things like that, the barriers are really, really high. They're very challenging and systems are sometimes set up to stop.

Mark Carroll (: 41:14

Hmm

Andy K (: 41:26

young people like that coming into the system and when they kick off or create problems the instant thing to do is usually to exclude them and that's what happened in this case but if we think if we exclude this one young person and he goes into the criminal justice system for want of a couple of hundred quid to support him and paying free membership into a club and giving him a wee bit

Mark Carroll (: 41:37

Hmm.

Andy K (: 41:52

additional support. We're talking seven figure sums should he go into a life of crime in the criminal justice system. So the return on investment to invest in young people like him to help him be as healthy as he can be.

Mark Carroll (: 42:00

Hmm.

Hmm

It's true does it just it seems not so interrupts just as you're saying that it just becomes so It becomes so clear why we sometimes need to even change what we think of empathy because it's like everything you're saying there It's like yes having awareness of the life course the empathy like in some of the genetic view But it's some like empathy people assume empathy has to mean only being nice

empathy can be just about understanding. solitogenic approach seems to be about understanding both in terms of what they lack and where you do need to get them a cuddle but also where they have a baseline of strength on upon which you can build and push them. Effortlessly speaking as a coach to push into a leadership position push push and it's not about this protection but it's about I don't know having a more

A less straightforward but approach of trying to grow someone that builds out of what they can do but also is considerate for what they can't while getting all these other variables crit. But it's just not being nice all the time, it's being effective isn't it?

Andy K (: 43:12

It is about being effective, this nice and humanistic and everything. I think it can be a little bit problematic. I think it helps be nice, but there's different ways to be nice. So that if I'm working with a student and they've produced work that is not up to the standard,

I'm really interested of why it's not up to the standard.

Mark Carroll (: 43:37

Hmm.

Andy K (: 43:38

But we must be clear, listen, that standard's not high enough. So I would say the pass mark for an undergraduate student is 40%. Unless there are serious issues, every single student should be able to achieve 40%. There's something going on externally, whatever it may be, if they've not been able to achieve that. But the reality is,

If I was working with a young person in the workplace and they produced a bit of work that was 40 % and I was their boss, I wouldn't be happy. wouldn't be happy if it was 50%. I wouldn't be happy if it was 60%. I want to see them do their absolute best and invest in them doing their best, but be really clear.

when it's not good enough. In performance terms, that's in sport, that's a little bit different in that if, well, it's from my experience of coaching high performers. So I don't want to call them elite because that's a word I don't like because it's used to describe too many people. But tier four type athletes working on

Mark Carroll (: 44:42

Thank you.

I was going

to ask if you're an elite youth player but maybe you can leave that alone.

Andy K (: 44:49

Just don't. Just don't. But

say working with tier four athletes, so international level athletes, and at that level I shouldn't need to be able to or have to motivate them to be their best. These foundations should be there to be their best. If that's their

deficit and they can't continually motivate themselves to be there. Well, I'm not going to be angry at them. I'm not going to shout at them. I'm not going to say that's not good enough because they'll know it's the case. It's like in performance programs wielding big sticks and saying you need to be better. Seriously, part of the if you want to do well in life.

A you've got to have a relatively good work ethic. I'm not of the school of saying you need to work your fingers to the bone because again that's not good for balance and it's not solitogenic but you need a work ethic that allows you to perform to your best. You need that comprehensibility, you need the manageability, you need the meaningfulness.

I've worked with athletes who have been on performance programs, so UK sport type performance programs, who have said, I've fallen out of love with the sport. I don't like the environment. I'm in. I don't enjoy going to training.

and they may also have pressure from coaches or performance directors for being for underperforming

question is is that environment solutogenic? No it's not. Any environment where someone loses their motivation and their meaning from what they do.

isn't an environment that allows someone to prosper and be their best.

Mark Carroll (: 46:34

So does every environment and they need, I wanted just to play that as an advert here then, does every environment need to change necessarily to orientate towards someone else's life course or is it actually more an argument of understanding their life course in order to help them assimilate to the environment? how do we, just I wonder in terms of between how far can we take this?

Andy K (: 46:55

I think that we need agile coaches who are able to recognize the life course or potential life courses and the meaning that different people take from their sport. But the central point should be that we should accept that to be where they are, they're motivated to be there. And if they're not, then

Mark Carroll (: 47:16

Hmm.

Andy K (: 47:19

we need to as coaches look deep in ourselves and think are we using our energy positively? I've talked about this use of energy in the African context as well. I won't go off in that tangent but are we using our energy in the most positive way? Do we want everyone to assimilate with the system or do we want to recognize that there are differences between people in those systems where one thing works for some and another thing

works for other people. So that I've been lucky enough to work with some really good female athletes, high performers in multiple levels of life. And what's really important for many is to achieve away from sport, to have other interests away from sport. So I interviewed

Mark Carroll (: 47:50

Hmm.

Andy K (: 48:10

as part of a research study that I've not got published yet, but I interviewed an international, well, an Olympic athlete who was full-time on a podium program, so full funding, and wasn't prospering. They had to fight for it, but they went to university to do a part-time teaching degree.

So that gave them something else, a focus away from the sport to use their day for to focus on becoming a teacher, which also meant practical experience in schools and such. Guess what? The performance went up. There are some schools of thought that would say, no, you've got to wholly focus on your sport.

Mark Carroll (: 48:46

Hmm.

Andy K (: 48:53

but sometimes being able to focus on something else and to create more meaning kind of puts why we do sport in the first place. So it's been able to differentiate for these different needs. It's the same if we look at professional footballers. How many hours a week does a professional footballer train? I'm thinking 20 hours max. Does that seem fair?

Mark Carroll (: 49:03

Hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm,

maybe they might somebody argue that they don't stop but it's like 24 some profession mentally But yeah in terms of time the training field to imagine not much more than that maybe

Andy K (: 49:29

that leaves an awful lot of the rest of the time where they're not doing anything. We've got problems with gambling with professional footballers, problems with lots of different things and that's in the literature as well that it's not necessarily the best thing for their mental health so that the

Mark Carroll (: 49:47

you

Andy K (: 49:53

setting up a solutogenic environment is to give them affordances, opportunities to go away and do other things that are not so contingent on what they're doing on a Saturday afternoon.

Mark Carroll (: 50:06

Well, think I think it's Marcus Rashford. He was quite a keen case example in this where he had obviously a lot of charity work that he was doing outside of sport and and it still allowed him and I was a lot of thing there's been there has been work in psychology to say that helps people rationalize things. They bring a wider perspective so they can go over defeats more easily. They're actually re-energized because of not being burnt out. We're having only that sole focus to consider all the time.

So like there is actually an evidence base to support that as well, but that's a nicer antidote around that I think too.

Andy K (: 50:37

Absolutely.

So when we're talking about how do we create healthy environments for athletes, we need to explore with, when we're talking at the top level here, those that are doing it for a living, we need to explore things that can give them a different level of meaning, potentially widen their social

identity because we know that say with an injury and you're away from the team or you're away from training you lose a bit of your social identity and that can be problematic so the question is how do we develop environments where that social identity is wider it's not I'm not suggesting we've got all the answers even for a second it's simply to pose these questions it's the thing how

Mark Carroll (: 51:07

Mm.

Andy K (: 51:24

How is this reflected in the way I am as a coach? How is this reflected in what I ask athletes to do? How is it reflected in the messages I'm presenting? So one of the athletes I'm coaching just now, if she was to message me to say, there was a girl's night out on Sunday, but there's a five hour bike ride prescribed for Sunday.

Well, instantaneous without even thinking response would be, well, let's make that your day off then from training. There's nothing lost in terms of adaptation. It's when that's happening all the time. It might be an issue. So that's absolutely fine. It's kind of.

Mark Carroll (: 52:03

Hmm.

Hmm.

Andy K (: 52:09

on Christmas Day, it's not prescribing training on Christmas Day. Unless something I used to do was go out with my buddies on Christmas Day and go out for a Christmas run where you had a wider range of abilities and we would just run along together and speak with each other. So there's different things you can do to present these messages to say,

Mark Carroll (: 52:14

Hmm.

Andy K (: 52:33

to maintain that manageability and meaningfulness in the sport to encourage athletes, participants to do other things and to see that as positive in terms of performance adaptation as well.

Mark Carroll (: 52:43

Hmm.

It's a nice example you gave there, because it's like you want a health-based outlet to be healthy still, so you don't want to necessarily tell them, you can go and do this or go and get drunk. could be, well, I mean, we talk about this in the context of, for an academies, for example, I think if we know that we need to allow more space and time for kids to hang out with their friends, we can also, at the same time as giving that, manage it somewhat by encouraging them to do activities that are more sensible than...

hanging about tunnels, they'll go to cinema. I actually encourage the community that they've got within a club perhaps to be further strengthened by going with your teammates to do things. So there can be ways in which we can still manage and maintain the aspect of what we think is really important for doing work in the environment, but still have a wider appreciation for their needs, it, so to generally.

Andy K (: 53:36

Absolutely.

Or even

a session-based level, if what many coaches are focused on, and they might not have that agency or autonomy to have that wider influence, because often coaching is episodic, that the group is parachuted into a session, and then they're taken out, and the opportunities for the coaches to have meaningful dialogue with the players or the athletes or whatever.

is relatively limited in that. That's the norm, I think, for most coaching environments where having... It's easier, I suppose, if you're on a performance program or an academy program where there's time put aside for developmental opportunities that don't relate directly to sport. That's a bit easier.

but that's not the case for most coaches. But I would say for a swimming coach, for example, if you've got a session that includes 10 times 100 meters freestyle with 10 seconds rest in between, how about making it 30 seconds rest in between or having a block of two minutes

in which, or it goes beyond the normal physiological recovery to allow the athletes to speak with each other at the end of the lane to have a laugh, to pull in a game, to have a game of something kind of like the traditional models of coaching where you'll have a game of some sort at the end of the session.

Mark Carroll (: 55:05

Hmm.

Andy K (: 55:14

That sometimes disappears for more performance-oriented athletes, but how about having little races, little fun team games, opportunities to have a chat and develop these relationships in session design. So it can be really implicit. It can be very, very subtle and not controlling. So...

The coach might say, that's not physiologically optimal. But if we think about stress is integrative, holistic, coming from social, psychological, physiological, so the biopsychosocial model, if these stresses are coming from all these areas, well, why do we not plan training in a biopsychosocial way where we're thinking about re-energizing people in each of these components?

We're not thinking about it in terms of simply physiological adaptation or some sort of performance psychology in terms of focus. We just widen it to the social.

Mark Carroll (: 56:05

Hmm.

Mm-mm.

And would that be correct, Andy, see if I was trying to any language, you know, the day-to-day coach making counter, like is that sort of like, where let's say you've got a kid who's just not communicating very well in the field, there's an element of the social aspect there, but then rather than focusing on, barring the solution B, let's keep getting people around them, this is then actually looking at, well, do they lack the confidence to know what to say?

And biologically are they at an age where there's different changes and today, hormonally, that moods also. So we're trying to work out from meeting them, work out from another lens rather than try to work within the single lens is problem solving. Is that the typical thing or I just check for how we could bracket the argument a little bit more.

Andy K (: 56:57

you

Have you come across the

book Teach Like a Champion by Doug Limov?

Mark Carroll (: 57:07

I've heard though, I've not read it Andy, no.

Andy K (: 57:11

So he talks about school environments where, so I think where his work originally came from was that he looked at academic performance, I could be wrong, I've not read the book for years and years, but he looked at the relationship between levels of social

socioeconomic factors and then educational attainment and what we see is in more prosperous environments you tend to have higher academic achievement.

Mark Carroll (: 57:37

Hmm.

Andy K (: 57:44

What he did was not what many scientists do is look for the line of best fit and then teach to the line of best fit the norm. He looked at outliers. So where are the schools that are outperforming when they're in an area of high socioeconomic deprivation, for example, and what are they doing in those environments which are allowing young people to perform

higher than would be expected of them so why are they outliers?

Mark Carroll (: 58:15

Thanks

Andy K (: 58:16

And what he was proposing was inherently solitogenic and part of that was to have an expectation that everyone in the classroom must be involved, that not answering questions isn't an option. If you've got young people struggling to engage in communication.

then you're buddying them up with someone who is pretty good at communication and getting buddies to help answer questions and such. So it's to say, right, there's no get out clause. You're going to be involved in this session, whether you like it or not. I expect you to communicate and I'm going to support you in communicating and I'm going to use everything in my power to help you be a better communicator.

So that's kind of the premise of what he wrote about. And I'm thinking about it in terms of another conversation I had with coaches when I worked at British Cycling. I suppose I can mention the rider. So Mark Cavendish is one, well, probably he's won more Tour de France stages than anyone now, I think. One of the most successful bike riders in

Mark Carroll (: 59:05

Hmm

Hmm.

Andy K (: 59:34

the UK and Mark's probably a bit like me and it's really hard to shut him up. You've seen me in meetings as well. So if someone asks a question, I'm forced in and I want to go, la la la la la la la. And I quite struggle with that. And then there's these other people sitting at the back of the room writing notes or whatever and not saying a word and never being involved.

Mark Carroll (: 59:40

Thank

you

Andy K (: 59:57

And what this coach said to me was that these silent people, those people that never put their hands up, they never volunteer to get involved in the conversations are the ones who have sometimes got the most meaningful and insightful things to say. Therefore, to set a good environment, I want to know what they're thinking, what their recommendations are, and I will value that. So...

the simple intervention which developed throughout the academy programs and it was led by when it was led by Tim Buckle he had a no hands up rule in a group session so the coach would pick ask someone specifically to answer a question and support them to answer the question

they best can but in a non-threatening way because they've often got something meaningful to say and then confidence builds over time it's not an authoritarian you must it's more right i expect you to answer this question there's no no get out you're not escaping from it but it's not done in a threatening way

Mark Carroll (: 1:00:45

Hmm

Mmm.

Yeah, I think that sounds really, that sounds more helpful, I would say, for coaches than the change everything about what you do. This isn't about lowering standards then. This is just about being flexible, but still firm, but flexible in the way that you're allowing someone to meet those standards and then, know, supporting them. Again, thinking biopsychosocially, but what's maybe an impediment to the progress towards that state? Is that correct? Yeah.

Andy K (: 1:01:09

So

Absolutely, absolutely. Sometimes

solutagenics isn't about this softly softly how would I say

a highly liberal way of doing stuff. It's just a realistic way of balancing the biopsychosocial stressors in the environment to allow people to adapt.

Mark Carroll (: 1:01:55

Hmm.

Particularly when you mentioned that we're also looking at what people's, biographical information can illuminate around the strengths of someone's character and actually, it's actually not about giving people excuses, it's actually also, it's about being aware of what they lack, but also reminding them of what they have, because if anything, that's actually, that's when they bridge the gap better, because it's actually less of an excuse and more, you can do it, you're just gonna meet me in a different way.

because you have your own way of reaching that goal.

Andy K (: 1:02:26

Yeah,

what happens with kids who might struggle at school, might have learning difficulties, they might be disengaged and they might be excluded from the classroom and such and there's not that... People have got low expectations of them. And my experience of life is where

those people who have always had low expectations of them, they'll often work to the lowest common denominator. For me as a coach, and it's partly reflected in the stories I tell in the chapter as well, as a coach, how can I influence the life course of that individual? Can I have a positive interaction

Mark Carroll (: 1:03:01

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Andy K (: 1:03:09

with them that might result in a change for the rest of their life. So I talked about two experiences at school. One being the fat ginger kid who wasn't included in a basketball tournament and kids who I thought were equally as inadequate as me.

got a game so that was profoundly upsetting for me. that gives me, these types of experiences give me lot of the drives in my life as well. So if someone thinks Andy's not very good at this or he can't achieve there, I'll fight to the death to prove them wrong. So that experience in itself that was highly

Mark Carroll (: 1:03:39

Mm.

Hmm.

Andy K (: 1:03:50

negative and very very upsetting. I think I must have been seven or eight years old, something like that. I still remember it vividly to this day of how upset and inconsolable I was at a very simple and seemingly innocuous behaviour from a coach. Is it a bad thing that I experienced it? Probably not, but I wouldn't necessarily

Mark Carroll (: 1:03:58

Hmm.

Do it?

Andy K (: 1:04:15

wish it on others. And then later on in my life with another PE teacher who recognized my work ethic. And the fact that I remember that to this day one team talk. And it was this one coach who recognized stuff that no one had ever recognized before. Or

Mark Carroll (: 1:04:25

Hmm.

Hmm

Andy K (: 1:04:38

Another coach has been my mentor for quite a few years. I've not seen him for ages. Who was really frank about my abilities as an athlete and my abilities to perform at a higher level. nah mate, you've not got the prerequisites. You're not very good, are you? My initial response was, well, let's say what my initial response was. But then he saw...

Mark Carroll (: 1:04:56

Hmm.

Andy K (: 1:05:05

some things in me and my behaviors that thought Andy could be a really good coach here and for the next 10 years or whatever this coach who has coached multiple world champions one of the top coaches in the world whenever I sent him an email or called him he always found time for me so these things that have happened in my journey is

Mark Carroll (: 1:05:11

Hmm.

Hmm.

Andy K (: 1:05:32

drive what I do as a coach is to think right my behaviors towards others is right I expect you to do your absolute best within certain constraints no excuse well I want to hear reasons but no excuses come on pull up your level but to recognize hard work and when someone asks for support or help to always give it.

Mark Carroll (: 1:05:54

Thank you Andy, it's fantastic you get your insight onto this and I'm really intrigued to find out more about the Solitogenic approach because I don't think it would do it's justice to say it's just about looking holistically. think clearly from having this conversation Solitogenic is actually about what holistic coaching really is and I don't think and I would put myself into this camp.

I don't think a lot of us have looked deeply enough as to how we can really be holistic in how we approach things. And then just spinning it from more of a less of a pathogenic approach to more of a health-based approach in itself has led us down into lot of really interesting conversations. And I love as well that you've got a lot of your own biography, you know, inside this. We didn't get a chance to talk about actually how coaches reflexively probably should consider their own biography and the way we think about things, but just.

Considering the way the life course of the athlete and not using it as an excuse, but using it as a base point to further challenge them is a really cool way of seeing things. So hopefully those that are listening have found that really useful. I would encourage you, and just to get a quick plug, what is the book again that the book chapter was part of?

Andy K (: 1:07:02

I've got this written down just in case I forgot. So it's from Andy Borey and Emily Ryle. And it's called, and I'll read it verbatim, Reimagining Talent Development in Sport. And then it's got a subheading, Seeing a Different World. So I think that really captures it. It's really for us to reimagine what we think effective.

Mark Carroll (: 1:07:05

Yeah

Andy K (: 1:07:26

talent development looks like. that book's written between academics like me, practitioners, athletes. So it's not simply an academic book for academics. Those who have been athletes, coaches, practitioners contributing as well.

Mark Carroll (: 1:07:42

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and actually I was sitting down because I actually found it quite interesting to read the novel academic books are interesting to read at all, but that's just a testament to the way you shape the narrative of the chapter. It was really easy and accessible to stay up a long side. So again, that's just another thing I would suggest to people who don't give that book chapter a read. Andy, how could people get in touch with you if they maybe want to continue the conversation? If you want them to get in touch with you, if don't, that's fine as well. What you say?

Andy K (: 1:08:11

The same goes for

anyone, Mark. I'm not saying all these positive things and not saying, no, but everyone can get stuffed. No, I'm too busy. It's really, really easy to find me. I work at University of Stirling. So you can find my email on the university web page. I use Twitter, I refuse to call it.

Mark Carroll (: 1:08:19

Bye

Andy K (: 1:08:32

by that single letter. So I'm a wee bit active on Twitter so you can reach out to me there, you can reach out to me in LinkedIn as well. There's no excuse for not being able to find me if you want to speak to me. unless I get 50 requests, I'll find time for most people.

Mark Carroll (: 1:08:50

Yeah, yeah, it's not. No thanks. Thanks so much Andy and thank you to the people that are listening. I will see you next time. Thank you.

Andy K (: 1:08:57

Thanks very