Can a coach change sports? Reflections with Tom Hartley

Tom Hartley (: 00:00

We would frequently take coaches into different environments so they could experience what coaching looks like somewhere else. And I think just to put someone in another environment might be really difficult because you don't know where to look.

there might be a lot of noise for the coach. You don't really understand what information is helpful and what isn't. And there might be some frameworks out there or just good questions that help people focus their attention.

Mark Carroll (: 00:24

Hi everyone, welcome to this episode of Labours of Sports Coaching. In today's episode I was joined by Tom Hartley who is Head of Competitive Development at Motorsport UK. It was such an interesting conversation and quite different in that we were actually looking at Tom's journey in moving across the sports that he coaches from being someone

who was originally a football coach to someone who's now starting to explore the world of coaching within motorsport. Tom gives very honest reflections of the learning that he's acquired and it offers a real insight into what we as coaches can learn from other sports and actually about just the question of can we transfer our coaching skills across sports. So regardless of where you sit on that.

And regardless of what your intentions are you might not want to necessarily switch sports but you can and that's what comes out the conversation and just through the the Capacities that we have as coaches to think and move and be from our evil in that sense Even if you don't there is a lot to the disruption And the other opinions can bring that being an alien and one space

different from your own kind of offer. So we talked about really interesting conversations in that space, so I think you'll enjoy it. Another little insight into some going on with myself and the podcast and the wider labors of sports coaching mission. So please just remember obviously to follow the podcast and to share it, comment on it, those sorts of things. But actually, check out the newsletter that is

going to be dropping, I suppose, for lack of a better word, but we'll start at the very beginning of February. Now the newsletter is a bit of a sister project, but part of the wider Labourers of Sports Coaching movement. In the show notes, you'll find the newsletter and you'll notice that it is entitled, Labourers of Sports Coaching, the Self-Determined Coach. Now this is a newsletter that's got more of a focus on the science of motivation, leaning on my area of

of knowledge in so far as motivational psychology and touching specifically on self-determination theory and how that can be applied to coaching. So within each month of the issue, are we giving breakdowns of the latest research and findings surrounding the coach-created motivational environment? I'll offer some practical advice for how we can actually...

implement some of the knowledge and advice that we're given around motivational theory in a way that's effective but sensible as well and understanding other tensions that are part of the coaching process. I'll also offer some commentary and bit of a blog in terms of trends and messaging in this area and I'm going to give you wee bit of insight into some of my ongoing research as an academic and then there will also be some wider conversations and

And summaries of some of learning that we're getting in the Labour's or Sports Coaching podcast on the various guests that we have on including some updates and Opportunities for you guys to look ahead and see what's coming up on the show So and please please subscribe the link is in the show notes for this episode but also within the about section of the podcast wherever you're listening and Check it out. It's all completely free And yeah, it contributes to the wider mission that we're trying

serve up here, who are trying to help you guys and help ourselves learn. So please do that. Also check out where we are, my own website, so you can find out a little bit more about me, including some of the consultancy services that I offer. And there are links to my LinkedIn profile, connect with me and we can interact with each other. So yeah, with that, let's get into the conversation with

Tom Hartley,

Mark Carroll (: 04:37

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

Tom Hartley (: 04:40

Very good, thank you Mark. Enjoying working from home and my third cup of coffee of the day, so very well.

Mark Carroll (: 04:44

Thank

That's good, I've got you the right energy, that's excellent. So obviously we're going to talk today about, it's quite an interesting topic, it's almost like a, some sense, in one level at least, it's a proposition to coaches to consider could you transfer your coaching skills to another sport? Could you maybe move to another sport? Or for those that just think that's absolute blasphemy, that's absolutely fine, we'll work through that. Maybe for other people at very least, how could we maybe use your reflection so far, having moved from

you are still involved in football to a degree, but move from one sport into now working within motorsport, what your reflections have been, and that can include some vulnerabilities at Browns, but also the opportunities you've had to learn as you grow as a coach, could imagine, just generally speaking, from learning across sports. So I think also for listeners to understand from how they could learn from other sports better. So it will be quite interesting. So let's just start off by why on earth did you choose to stop?

just fully coaching football and get behind the wheel and help somebody in motorsport. What was the motivations for moving across those different worlds in a way?

Tom Hartley (: 05:56

Well, I've had a fantastic career and still continue to, hope, working in football in a few different roles at the NGB, at the English FA, at Arsenal Football Club, and made the decision to move from Arsenal back in 2020 to UK coaching. And for me, that was a brilliant opportunity to zoom out from football specifically, but think about coaching and coach development across any sport or physical

physical activity. The learning curve for me was exponential moving to UK coaching. I didn't know what I didn't know and I must admit I felt like a real imposter stepping into a space talking to people who had vast experience and much more experience than me working in their own sport. But I realised quite quickly from being in football for such a long time, I'd become accustomed to doing things in a certain way, whether that's the way I approached coaching and practice design.

Mark Carroll (: 06:45

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 06:49

whether it was the way I thought about pathways for players or for coaches. So just being exposed to how different sports thought about the support they give their coaching workforce or their athletes was priceless. It really was. I remember early on in my time at UK coaching, facilitating a community of practice where in the room there were coaches from a number of different Olympic sports and two in particular canoeing and basketball.

Mark Carroll (: 07:03

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 07:15

So an individual sport based on water, a team sport based on land. And the conversation was focusing around the role of the coach, where the basketball coach was highlighting, well, I'm intrinsic to the way the game is being played. I call timeouts, I'm rolling subs on and off. I'm part of the way we tactically approach an opponent. And the canoeing coach said, well, I'm coaching for redundancy. As soon as my athlete goes,

I'm there gone. I'm I'm an observer. My role I'm I'm my role is is to watch and support and it's nothing to do with the way that they the way that they compete and it really struck me and I've got a great coaching friend called Rusty Russell Earnshaw. you guys are great guests from here. And yeah, Rusty, Rusty posed a question. How would you coach in your sport?

Mark Carroll (: 07:56

yeah, we had Russell on the show actually Tom, aye, you know, aye. Good. Yeah.

Tom Hartley (: 08:08

if you didn't have a half time break, what would that mean for your practice? Well yeah, this is the same for any sport when a coach isn't present and they're not with their competitor or their athlete during competition. How does it change the shape of your practice? And I think being a football coach is really valuable because it gives me a space to contextualize and make sense of some of the things I've experienced or seen in other sports and environments. And of course,

some stuff burns up on re-entry. There might be something happening in canoeing that just is too disconnected from the realism, the context of football. But actually there might be a golden thread or a nugget in there that could really help. So in the canoeing example, what if I couldn't intervene during a game? What if I couldn't say anything at all to my players? How would that affect the way that I design training?

So players are more resourceful with what's going on around them. And all of a sudden for me stepping into this role at UK coaching, there were all these threads and light bulbs. I remember lots of conversations with people working in skateboarding. And at the time skateboarding was in a really interesting space because they'd just received some progression sport funding from UK sport, working towards their first Olympic games. And almost have a sport which is

a lifestyle sport built on peer-to-peer learning, where coaching is in the way it exists in traditional sports, doesn't exist in their world. So the reliance on learning from the people around you in your environment, being attuned to the cues and the clues in the arena where you're skateboarding, creates a different environment for skill acquisition and skill development.

Mark Carroll (: 09:37

Hmm.

you

Tom Hartley (: 09:54

And thought, well, there's no copy and paste from skateboarding to football. But what if we took a skate park mindset into a football practice? We encouraged free play. We encouraged decision, your own decision making, create, using creativity to solve problems. Not the whole time, but it, threads into the water and into the way we do things. And that for me was the start of really

Mark Carroll (: 10:06

Mmm.

Hmm

Tom Hartley (: 10:22

being quite attuned, quite intentional about looking into other sports and other cultures within sports and thinking, right, okay, if I was to reinvent what football coaching looks like for me in football, what would I bring across? What would I adapt? What might I leave at the door to try and be quite holistic, I suppose, in my approach or well-rounded?

Mark Carroll (: 10:30

Hmm.

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 10:48

And then to go to your point, sorry, Mark you, that's Jim.

Mark Carroll (: 10:48

No, no, no,

no, don't, don't keep going, was just that you've made me think about something that you were saying,

Tom Hartley (: 10:54

No, no, I was just thinking about then the transition from UK coaching and working across these different sports and physical activities at lots of different levels into motorsport. For me personally, it was an opportunity to try and take that mindset of learning from other worlds, but then apply it in a sporting context that's maybe a little bit different to the traditional.

athletic sporting offer and some of the exciting things I'm noticing in motorsport is there's 13 different disciplines of the sport so they're almost set up like sports in their own right but the coaches and the athletes in those different disciplines face very similar challenges they work through similar problems when it comes to human performance and helping people be at their best whether that's a coach or an athlete.

It doesn't matter if you're in a rally car or a racing car. We're still human beings at the end of the day. So there's lots of shared learning.

Mark Carroll (: 11:55

So

on that point, I want to get into that with you, but I want to rewind just slightly to some of the, where you got to before you kind of reached the door with motorsport as such, because I think it was really interesting. It almost sounds like a bit of a slow transition period. It seems like you've been kind of building up to this incrementally, because you've given us some examples of chatting outside that siloed thought to actually maybe applying to a lot of stuff like Russell Ensha as well. It's like coaching challenges.

And it's like, I mean, that's a potent example of what if you couldn't speak to your players at halftime. And I just want to know about the value, a little bit more about the value you've found by taking some, you might say unrealistic in so far as, yeah, but you can chat at halftime in football, so why bother? But to just kind of put yourself out there and put a radical way to then actually see how you could adapt to that, to then it's like that adaptive expertise is now something that's becoming more significant in coaching.

And then because there might be a lot of situation at some point or another. And again, I'm thinking now for coaches who maybe still don't want to change sport, but they could still be learning through doing these sort of mini challenges and such. I just wanted to know, what's your thoughts on that? How did you find that? Just a little bit more detail. I think that's quite interesting.

Tom Hartley (: 13:07

Well, think intentionality as a coach is really, really important. And yeah, I hear you completely. We talk to the players at half time in football. So why would we bother thinking about that not being the case? Well, it probably gives you the opportunity to be playful with the way that you think about things. And at Google do similar, similar stuff. So I was fortunate enough a few years ago to do some work with a person called Kirk Vallis, who's head of creative capability at Google.

And they've got some really interesting thought experiments, if you like, that help people think broadly and outside of their normal frame of reference. So Google 10x would be one. And I know I will explain this really, really badly. Kirk would use the example to say, well, if we need to win, if we're Arsenal and we need to go and beat Manchester City 10-0, what would we do? How would we approach the game?

and the cynic would say, well, we'd never really need to beat Manchester City 10-0. But if you're able to kind of hold onto that and use your imagination for a moment, it might help you think about how we would approach the game differently. So for example, we know that Jack Grealish is one of the most found players in the Premier League. So if we want to win 10-0, we probably want to develop some strategy so we avoid conflict with Grealish. We might want to think about how...

Mark Carroll (: 14:10

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 14:23

which players in our team take free kicks quicker than anyone else, rather than more accurately, so we can maximise the time on the field. And then we might think about how do we help players identify and solve problems themselves, rather than rely on the coach to do it. So I think putting yourself in a position as a coach where you can think about scenarios that are bigger than the problem that you're facing, give you the opportunity to develop some ideas that are wild.

Mark Carroll (: 14:30

you

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 14:50

But then actually there'll be some principles that underpin those ideas that actually could be really applicable to the stuff that you're trying to achieve.

Mark Carroll (: 14:55

Yeah, just

most most coaches are right as well. A lot of coaches they set a team up probably under the, even if it's a false outlook of them being well ahead, they'll probably play with more freedom, more creativity, less fear and probably more likely to go ahead. So it's kind of like, is that kind of like how taking those strange thoughts and bringing it back might have a solution to something you hadn't previously thought about?

Tom Hartley (: 15:17

Yeah, completely. I think like something that's really meaningful to me is, especially when you're working with young players, that winning shouldn't be the only metric that we measure the success of our performance by. Actually, if you're working with developing players, you should be thinking about co-creating a number of metrics that help us be intentional in the way that we go and play. And I really lean into co-created because it shouldn't be the coach setting them for the players. It should be a process that you do together, even though the coach might lead some of that.

themselves. But if you're able to have a range of things that help you understand what success looks like, you're probably more likely to get to the thing you really want to do anyway, win, in long term. But you're developing a whole other set of skills, you're broadening your toolbox as a player and as a coach, if you're able to diversify the way that you think.

Mark Carroll (: 16:05

And it's just what I find really interesting just as you spoke about like the example from Google and stuff like that. Because what seems very telling about you Tom is it seems that you've been raising a bit of a culture towards this sort of looking beyond what maybe we might see or know more locally. Like obviously from your previous roles and governance within UK coaching and then you spoke at the business side of things. I mean how valuable is it to actually look outside it and maybe let's think even.

momentarily here outside of sport. Because I mean, I think I've said this in the past to coaches as well, like you should take an interest in certain things that maybe represents high performance wherever it comes from or certain things that represents innovation wherever it comes from. Business, I think helps tremendously in terms of understanding efficiencies and strategic thinking. know, I even go down the route of sometimes saying to people like, you should read fiction, you should read like novels, you should read things that you know.

capture themes of emotions of the human experience that again, you may not think it can bring itself back to coaching, but it does. just want to delve into that a little bit further, or at least unless you think we've not already covered enough there, but just when you spoke about that with the Google figure, I want you to know a little bit more there in some of your other interactions with that out of sports space, maybe as how that may have been a bit of a predicator to this next journey you went on to.

Tom Hartley (: 17:25

Yeah,

totally. And I think that was something that when I reflect back on my time, especially at Arsenal, when I was thinking about how do we innovate and think progressively about the work we're doing with players, this notion of shared worlds really emerged for me. And I probably was a bit wacky with the way that I started to think about it. It was unfiltered, should we say. And I remember...

Mark Carroll (: 17:41

you

Tom Hartley (: 17:48

We did a coach development event for some of our coaches in the Women's Academy at Arsenal. And we invited in some people from the RAF to talk about how do they train fighter pilots to deal with decision making under pressure. Now, of course, the consequences of the work that we do and the work that a fighter pilot might do are going to be completely different. But some of the underlying principles around decision making when the stakes are really high are shared.

Mark Carroll (: 17:59

Mm-hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 18:14

They talked about a range of things that they would take a pilot through, including simulator training as a way of giving them a range of practice opportunities before they go into kind of a conflict situation or a situation where there is consequence. And then they talked about some of the work that they might do before, during and after with a pilot to help them reflect on what happened, how did it go, what information were they using to make their decisions.

Mark Carroll (: 18:29

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 18:40

And there is an absolute hard line between that and what a coach might be doing with an athlete in sport. You might just have to think about how do you frame it, how do you land it with an athlete, might be different to the fighter pilot. And I think this is the really important thing for coaches and something that I'm holding on to, is that you could read legacy and learn about the All Black success and all of the key things that they would say contribute towards a high performing team.

Mark Carroll (: 18:47

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 19:08

but it's not a copy and paste back into your own sport and your own world because the context is different, the people are different. Carlo Ancelotti, no not Carlo Ancelotti, got that wrong, Ranieri won the Premier League with Leicester. He did something quite special with a group of players who the year before were battling relegation, but the approach he took isn't copy and paste. That success can't just be duplicated in other places because it works at Leicester doesn't mean it will work elsewhere.

Mark Carroll (: 19:19

You

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 19:36

So the RAF work was interesting.

Mark Carroll (: 19:38

And what would you say you can, so if it's not necessarily looking at the macro level, you know, this is just that we can transfer it. What, and I think this is an interesting conversation because it's a whole separate thing, talking about transferable styles across sport from the player perspective. I think the jury's out on that a little bit more, least in the sense of that we need specific specificities, always kind there, but for players. But we're talking about transferable styles for coaches, and this is almost like transferable leadership to a degree. So while the context is different,

what would you say for, at Ranieri and perhaps how you have now experienced that as you've moved across contexts, what have you managed to maintain or what at least has allowed you, if it's better phrase this question, what's allowed you to assimilate to the different contexts that you have perhaps pulled from the lessons at Allblatt, from other sort of wider or inter-sport lessons that you might say, what can we actually transfer or is it really just that we have to be mindful of the fact we really have to look at these things as a.

as a blank canvas each time and maybe that's a more powerful way of moving. What would you say?

Tom Hartley (: 20:42

I would position the coach or me as the filter between one world and the other, because actually that then is the way to try and make sense of some of the things that would land the best or have the most impact back in your world. I remember from the RAF time in particular that the people from the Air Force spoke about hot debriefs and call debriefs and how when they were working with the paramilitary and they've been out on incredibly difficult

training runs and training schedules, that they would intentionally put people through a hot debrief to see what their emotional response was to the training. And then two days later, cover some of the same ground again and see what the point of difference was. Massive transferability into my world as a football coach, because actually that conversation with the players at the end of the game after we've just lost 1-0.

Mark Carroll (: 21:26

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 21:34

and then coming back into training two days later and reflecting on well, what does that really mean for what we do this week? It crosses over perfectly. And I think that's my point here that ultimately at the end of the day, regardless of if it's the Air Force, if it's high performance sport, there's still people that we're working with. So there's lots of shared approaches that would hold value. And I think this works on a zoomed in level when you're thinking about

Mark Carroll (: 21:40

Hmm.

Hmm

Tom Hartley (: 21:57

those kind of hands-on interactions with athletes and players. But it also works when you step out and zoom out for a moment. And here's something fresh in my mind. I watched a movie last night called The Bank of Dave on Netflix. It's a fascinating story. It's based partly on truth, but ultimately it talks about a local man who wanted to set up a local bank to support growth in their community.

Mark Carroll (: 22:10

Okay

Tom Hartley (: 22:23

His role within this story is to support people overcome hardship and done in a really caring and kind way. his work generated millions of pounds for the local economy, generated jobs. But it was a local support mechanism rather than a big national international banking corporation that perhaps doesn't have the same connection with people on a local level. And bear with me.

Mark Carroll (: 22:29

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 22:50

I'm drawing loads of threads and loads of dots into the world of how do we support coaches? Because historically a lot of coach support comes from a national level. It might be a qualification that's aimed at every coach in the country aspiring to reach a level two, should we say. But actually that doesn't necessarily help coaches deal with the challenges they're facing in their own context and in their own community. So what if, and if we hold onto this thought, what if coach development

Mark Carroll (: 22:53

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 23:18

was really contextual, was really built around the needs of coaches working in a certain geographical area. And it was personal and caring and supportive. So that person has someone to lean on and pick up the phone to. There's a coach from another sport just down the road who's working with a similar age group who might be facing similar challenges to me and taking some of those barriers away for people engaging with each other. Now.

Mark Carroll (: 23:25

Hmm.

Hmm.

you

Hmm.

Plus,

would look at that as well, Tom, as well, isn't it? If you think from the local bank of that analogy, people going to a bank for one fit, for one problem, that in itself sometimes is a better solution, rather than you going to an NGB award and, like, it's intentional or not, implicitly what is often said to coaches is that you don't just have one problem, because our curriculum is a host of problems, so now, whether or not there was only one problem, now you've convinced coaches that they have all these problems and...

And if we're thinking about the coach as a performer and trying to make sure we're developing competence and confidence concurrently, I like the local approach to a point. You're letting people come to you with what they know is a problem, not what you're telling them is one. It's just I'm getting that as you said that there. Yeah, sorry, I didn't want to interrupt your flow there. It's coming through to me there.

Tom Hartley (: 24:29

And again, here's another shared world that I'm really curious about. Off the top of my head, I'm now struggling to remember the name of the author. I will remember by the end of this conversation. Hillary Cotton, that's it. She's written a book called Radical Help, and it's all about the welfare state and how care is delivered. And she makes a point within her book around care in the modern system is a carer going to someone's home and they have a 15 minute window to be able to go and...

change a dressing on someone's leg or whatever it might be, help someone with their medication. Whereas care in the past, if you rewind, wasn't like that. It was going around having a cup of coffee, sitting down and really getting to know the person, listen to their challenges and their problems. And I bring that back to coaching because coaching's tough. Coaches work on their own a lot. It's a difficult role. The demands outweigh the support the coaches get sometimes. And...

I genuinely wonder what does care look like for a modern coach? How can we help them feel supported and able and valued so they don't leave and they keep coaching and they keep putting more into the sport because ultimately it's more sustainable if we look after our coaching workforce rather than just trying to fix the... we need to fix the leaky bucket rather than keep topping it up.

Mark Carroll (: 25:39

Yeah, 100%. Plus I always, and I think if we're to bring this to our conversation today as well, we also want to make sure that we don't, I think, give coaches advice or sometimes imperatives to go and do things that doesn't really serve them. Because I think what resonates is always more powerful. Like we're having a conversation today about learning across sports or even beyond sports. But...

what was striking at least what I took from the lesson you were telling me about that example you gave of like the hot debrief and the cool one. Like the reason why I think, and I'm not gonna assume too much here, but what at least the way I would take information away from that would be being a football coach. That resonates with me because I am able to attach context, my own context to that learning that because I experience halftime talks, I experience after bad game talks with players.

So I'm able to take the learning that actually does resonate to me, that's a different and perhaps a healthier, more organic way to transfer learning across sports or outside of sport because we're not asking people to copy and paste stuff for the sake of it. And I think again, like there's a lot of messaging I think around how we can learn from different sports and coaches or how we can learn across or even outside of sport that it can border on too much, it can border on gimmicky or it can border on.

on not necessarily something that's felt in a real sense, but it's actually just still taking up more of a coach's limited time, because even the most well-intentioned coaches will go and try and do these things, but should every coach do and learn about economics just because we're talking about business? No, they should go to the business stuff that has resonance with their own experience that they can then pull back from to a degree, isn't it? I feel like that's quite important to maybe.

say here at this point, what's your feelings on that? I mean, I might be wrong. don't know. It's just, it's interesting.

Tom Hartley (: 27:31

I think there's a point here about proximity. The further you move away from your context and your sport, the more unrelated some of these things could feel, which is absolutely fair enough. And maybe depending on the coach that you are, might be some, you don't want to go too far away from your context to look for this shared learning. It might just be the team who are training on the field next to you could be enough.

proximity to help you think differently about your practice. It doesn't have to be miles away from what feels like home and what feels normal. So I think it just depends on you and what your tolerance is for stepping away from your home environment. And there's something that you sparked in my mind, which is a reflection I've always had, I think, from football. And this might just be me and what I've been exposed to and what I've seen and learned through the years.

Mark Carroll (: 28:15

Yeah, 100%.

Tom Hartley (: 28:26

Some of the language I don't hear often from football coaches, and I'll speak for myself here, I don't use it, is the word feel. How does that feel? What does that feel like when you move like that, when you kick the ball? How did that feel during the game? And it's something that I've noticed in artistic sport, so gymnastic as an example, you would hear coaches talking to their athletes about feel constantly.

because it's about the relationship between the athlete and perhaps a piece of equipment. I've noticed it in my early experiences in motorsport as well. I was in a rally car last week and I suppose the technical term would be embodied cognition. So you have that connection between you and the thing that you are performing with, but there is a undeniable relationship between the human and the vehicle.

Mark Carroll (: 28:55

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 29:15

because as you move around the corner and the weight shifts in the vehicle, you know from your backside in the seat in many respects, you know how much force is going through the car and therefore the adjustments you need to make to the power of the steering. It's not something I've heard. I've seen surface in football a huge amount. And there's a curiosity for me about, why not? What would coaches need to be able to have a better conversation with players about feel?

Mark Carroll (: 29:27

Hmm.

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 29:41

what would that mean to them? And again, I'm not saying that football coaches should start doing this and force it in and labour it, but I think it's an interesting reflection that it features heavily in some environments and it doesn't in others.

Mark Carroll (: 29:49

Yeah?

Well, mean, that's a, to me that's a suggestion around how coaches, whether or not they're conscious of this or not, could better connect with what real self-regulated learning is. Because if you're asking an athlete to feel, you're asking them to delve into their own sort of feedback response. that's also helping get them into a state of understanding what their best performance state is. So if we talk about like flow and what that is, know, when an athlete's in the zone.

that's about momentum, that's feel, that's everything happening and occurring in a set way and the closer we can get athletes maybe to keep touch with what that feels like, then when they move away from that, these are conversations that help us then figure out why that's occurring. That's really interesting because I can imagine, that maybe one of these, now we're kind of moving on to what you've started to learn now, you went to, I was about to say the other side there, it sounds like you're a cult, but that idea of,

being in a motor car, you probably can't get away from the fact that you feel everything because you're attached to this engine and the vibrations and does it allow, that's what I would wonder about as well for a wee bit of slack for where it's for the coach or where it's for what the experience of the sport implicitly allows an athlete to recognise because I could imagine, and we're speculating here to a point, but with an athlete,

and motorsport perhaps have more advantages to have a more embodied experience of flow and performance because of the physical attachment to these machines that allow for that? Or is it maybe actually that's a bit of a cop out and saying that and actually there is a, maybe for a player just in a different way felt in football. I just wonder from now working with athletes in a different space, is it because of the space or is it because of the athletes? Is it because of the coaching? Why do you think there's been a bit of a separation there?

Tom Hartley (: 31:48

Great question. I don't necessarily have the answer.

Mark Carroll (: 31:51

I know it's just, I know, you know what, it's a question just to pose,

to reflect on, it's just, it's interesting.

Tom Hartley (: 31:56

I don't

think motorsport is an island and I suppose I'm reflecting now that the performer has to work in harmony with some equipment, whether that's a car or whether it's a horse in equestrian or perhaps it's a surfboard. And I think there's something really interesting about the relationship which is almost a triangle between person, equipment and then the task at hand.

Mark Carroll (: 31:58

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 32:24

and the adaptation that then needs to take place. There's really interesting research papers about embodied cognition and racing drivers and how there is no separation when they're in that state of flow between the car and them. They know when the back left tire feels like there's less grip just because of the feel of how the car's moving around a corner and therefore they're able to make the adjustments. I'm quite curious about how do you...

How do you help people notice that and then understand how they can get better at it or where the problem is, if you like. I remember spending some time at the Wave down near Bristol, so a surfing center, and talking to the head coach there who was kind of highlighting that for surfers earlier in their journey, their attention and focus was on them within. It was very narrow. It was about where's my feet, where's my center of gravity?

the more experienced the surfer became, their attention to focus became on the external environment, shaped the wave and therefore you don't think mechanically about the way you move your body, that feels more natural because you're now focused on the relationship between you, the surfboard and the wave. And there's definitely a symmetry there for motor sport and these other worlds.

Mark Carroll (: 33:22

you

Hmm.

Hmm.

But

that probably tells you about the extreme contextuality of these things too. But again, in a space that all coaches can at least appreciate and then, importantly not with the copying, cut, paste approach, but to at least recognize they need to find their own way, but they're still at the macro level, certain similarities of just the process of how still occurs. So I mean, like you'd said there around like not having that sort of internal focus. I there's a whole debate often in research about focus of attention. Should it be internal, external?

And again, it always does depend to a degree like, you know, while I think across, there's been a lot of systematic reviews and oftentimes the more external focus looking at, rather than the impact your body's had on the environment, more so the, more so the, run thinking internally about the positions of your body, more look at the effect the body can have on the environment or, but to a point that might help people learn a skill quicker to a degree without, we call it like a constrained action hypothesis where the body then goes into a weird.

We don't want the body to not run autopilot if it gets too clunky and too internally driven, it can have issues. But then the more expert, the more growing, the more advanced athlete can actually start to tap into a more narrow focus without it shaking up their overall performance. Or in some cases, like you mentioned in motor sports, where they have like an instrument as such, football, we have an instrument as such. But there are certainly artistic sports like gymnastics and stuff where...

The athletes oftentimes, they go off of what we might call a more holistic focus of attention, where it's like about the bodily energy and the feel, and it sort of sits in this weird blend between the feel of the environment within the body in that sort of weird way. And these are just interesting things to debate and to chat about, but it brings you to that. It's made me think about that now thinking about other sports, and that's one of the benefits perhaps here.

Tom Hartley (: 35:21

Mm.

Yeah.

And Mark, I can guarantee you're going to know more about this than I do. I was, I was reading, reading the other day about flow state and clutch state and how flow, I guess, is that when you're in the moment, there'll be a high level of enjoyment. There'll be a certain set of conditions for flow to take place. You'll be responding to feedback, which is environmental, et cetera, et cetera. And clutch state is being really focused on having to intentionally

Mark Carroll (: 35:33

Just pretend.

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 35:57

use certain skills or behaviors because of the performance moment that you're facing. Now there's crossover between the two and actually a better flow state supports a better clutch state and vice versa. And I was thinking about this for the life of a racing driver and how actually being in rhythm and in flow is so important. But what if you're defending somebody who's trying to get past you? You've got to then be intentional with some of the behaviors you have in the car.

Mark Carroll (: 36:14

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 36:27

but also maintain that sense of rhythm to be able to keep your racing lining and keep your position on the grid. And there's this balance. And I think you just said it, there's no right or wrong here. There's not a silver bullet. I think one of the messages I would take from this is that coaches are spending most of their time working in the grey. So having skills as a coach to work in levels of uncertainty to be able to recognise the information.

Mark Carroll (: 36:29

Hmm.

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 36:54

that's available to you. Develop your own resources if you like. What's the athlete experience and what's happening in the environment? What are we trying to achieve? That then as a coach helps you have more information at hand to make better decisions. But I think it's something I'm quite aware of in the new world I've gone into is that coaching and instructing in motorsport is built on

Mark Carroll (: 37:06

Hmm

Tom Hartley (: 37:16

years and years and years of lived experience and tacit knowledge. And there's probably a gap there in terms of some of the theoretical underpinnings of how we might support a driver, getting to flow, switch between flow and clutch state, reflecting the moment, use that to improve performance. There's lots of things that happen because people have done it and it's worked. But there isn't necessarily a foundation there in terms of the evidence.

Mark Carroll (: 37:38

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 37:44

to back it up. And I think it's really interesting that I'm working in a sport which has a huge amount of financial investment in the machinery, but the human side of it is probably underdeveloped.

Mark Carroll (: 37:45

Hmm.

Hmm hmm, you know the people are the ones that are controlling these machines as such so Drivers there as that is interesting Chris suppose just when we're never getting at the certain integrity of some of your reflections now you have entered this space I want to know How much of this has been prophecy led and that you've carried forward assumptions in the proven to be correct or how what have you actually brought in that maybe you did expect to occur but

you've came in expecting certain things to occur, but actually has there been anything that's taken you by surprise? And that might be across pedagogy, across the culture, that are personal elements and how that's growing you as a coach. Again, not just in helping you transition into a new sport, but just in terms of understanding what coach development is and what it requires to really be the best that we can be, I would wonder. let's maybe.

If you can take me down a bit of a journey there, I'd be quite keen to know your reflections. And again, we haven't mastered this yet. We just want to know honestly how you've been feeling so far.

Tom Hartley (: 39:00

Yeah, so I've noticed, and it probably goes without saying for people who haven't ever really been involved in motorsport, that there's a rich history of instruction within the sport. And that stems from safety and making sure that we don't put a car into a wall or a tree. But instruction, I sense, has been the route towards mastery. But because of the nature of instruction, doesn't

doesn't allow you to think broadly about some of the challenges that are driving my face and therefore how we can help them. And I would say that the shape of most conversations I've heard, noticed, seen, been told about are data driven. So I suppose motorsport is a sport and an environment where there is a oversupply of data.

you can look at a graph instantly after stepping out of a car with lots of squiggly lines highlighting braking timing, intensity, steering, when you put the throttle on, when you take it off. And you can straight away compare, well, this is what I'm doing and this is what someone five seconds quicker than me is doing. And then try to mirror and match what they're doing. But that information and that conversation is quite hard.

Mark Carroll (: 40:22

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 40:27

Like it's very matter of fact, it's very black and white and doesn't necessarily always take into account what the driver's thinking, feeling, what their thought process is, how they're dealing with pressure. And for me, there lies part of the difference between what high quality instructing in motorsport looks like, pointing out things to the driver and helping them use that to be better next time. And coaching, where perhaps...

Mark Carroll (: 40:50

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 40:54

We can analyze the performance together. We can explore the data from a range of different perspectives. We could think about how that driver's feeling about stuff. And how do we then design practices to help drivers get better rather than just going round and round, which holds value. But my fresh perspective and fresh eyes are, I wonder what other things coaches could have in their

Mark Carroll (: 41:03

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 41:21

toolbox as a coach in motorsport that would give an intentional focus for a driver on a certain part of the track or certain parts of driving craft. Because as fantastic as the technology is around driving simulators, vast majority of practice is spent perfecting going around on a track. But there's much more to it than that.

Mark Carroll (: 41:31

Hmm.

Hmm.

So what it's interesting to see as you're speaking there, like, cause you're, you're thinking to some point about almost like from, cause it seems like if we were to go back to football, football I think was the reverse of that where I think the opinion led to data. But now you're in a world where data leads to opinion. Now I always think about it's interesting being a football coach going into a world like that because you're probably able to recognize that there is.

there is more room and more credit that should be given for some of the subjectivity of things and some of maybe the conversational elements of coaching. But then I think about that as a coaching thing. I probably think in our world, we need actually, I think there could be an argument I would serve that we should be leading more of our conversation, more of our thought through that other unnecessarily. Now know that, this is a personal opinion, but it's just in terms of the different cultures within each sport. Sport is still trying to, particularly probably at youth levels, I think sports probably in a

where it could be served better to a degree, at least in the decisions that are made about young athletes that we don't allow just the fallibility or the fact that we have a subjectivity and a bias in the way that we carry opinions. So I've seen cases where coaches at the side of a park watch a kid. Now maybe previous to that, the coach that just came on off before them, he said to something about the kid, all of a sudden, they're biased, they're opinion, they're watching elements of their performance and they're looking for what they want to see and not always about what they can't see.

And I've seen coaches come in from a football space with a bit more of a maybe a bit of a motorsport opinion where they try to be blind as much as they can be to the subjective element, at least until they've had numbers that help them guide to where we're actually seeing issues in performance because the numbers could be telling you something different in overall conversion or different things like that that maybe makes you think maybe that isn't as problematic an area as what some other element is. Now it all has.

limitations to that thought, again, we can't be too driven by it. I 100 % agrees with I think football, particularly in an age where it is becoming more technological, there's a human element perhaps vulnerable within that. But it's just interesting as we speak, because you're obviously still in habit in both worlds, I'm purely in the football world, but how we carry different agendas forward as well, both in how we can serve each other, but also sort of there's counters to some of these arguments, because the context is different.

Tom Hartley (: 44:05

Yeah, and I've always believed that data and the information you can generate now in football is important, but it should be part of the conversation rather than the conversation. Because it's just some, it's a set of cues and clues in the environment that help you guide towards what is going on, not the how and not the why. And in motorsport,

from my experiences so far, that data feels like it takes up most of the conversation with a driver. But for me, the thought experiment or the different perspective I'm hoping to share is, and I said this to a few coaches last week, is what if you have no data available? Where do you start? Would you ever intentionally leave the data out of the conversation? And what would be the benefit of doing that? Not all the time, but sometimes. And for me,

Mark Carroll (: 44:38

Hmm.

Mmm.

Tom Hartley (: 44:59

If you have instant data available, does that make you lazy as a coach? Does it therefore not challenge the way that you help an athlete solve problems? Would you just give the data to a driver and ask them to reflect on it and then they own their own reflections? And I think that, I'm new in this space and I'm sure there are some fantastic coaches doing brilliant work in the way that they position this with their driver.

Mark Carroll (: 45:18

you

Tom Hartley (: 45:27

But if we've got this data, how do we become resourceful with that resource? How do we use that to stimulate really, really good conversations about

Mark Carroll (: 45:31

Hmm.

But what you have

done, Tom, is you're now the destructor. In a sense, isn't it? Because I'm thinking of the parallels here between the example you gave with Russell Earnshaw, who said the same thing from a football. And I see real utility in that, but that must be, that's where the strength in the alien, in a sense, the strength of someone coming in who has a different viewpoint, even if it goes outside of what they need to do, it's like, should you do this? Or should we at least, do we play about with this reality for little while? I think that's so strong.

Tom Hartley (: 45:38

Hmm.

Yeah, I must admit I feel very fortunate because right now I'm a time traveller. I definitely am noticing some of the conversations and approaches around coaching that we were experiencing in, football a few decades ago. And that's no criticism, it's just the case that motorsport has arrived at this point slightly later than others. And I'm sure lots of people in motorsport would probably agree.

Mark Carroll (: 46:10

Mm.

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 46:29

And for me, I'm thinking about how do we help people broaden their perspective on the way that they go about supporting a driver. I'm holding on to as long as possible being new in this space. I think my new favourite phrase is, I'm a professional idiot. I can come in and ask rookie questions without the fear of a consequence because actually I'm genuinely just really curious.

Mark Carroll (: 46:46

Mm-hmm

you

Tom Hartley (: 46:52

a piece

of work actually I'm starting at the moment. And again, I'm learning real lessons from my time in football and other sports, football in particular actually. And Pete Sturges, who was formerly at the English FA, for me is the person I look up to around this, that Pete spent many years developing the future game and the future player work at the English FA, talking about in the foundation phase and youth development phase.

What are the key characteristics and competencies holistically of aspiring players and what do they need to do? But nothing like that exists in motorsport. So for me, a project this year is trying to explore what does the future driver look like across discipline, across age and stage and across biopsychosocial technical tactical competencies. I want to do it because it will

Mark Carroll (: 47:33

Hmm.

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 47:43

help create some type of shared language and understanding of what good looks like at different parts of the sport. But for me, the ripple effect of that is it generates conversation. I really am quite comfortable with people disagreeing with whatever goes into that framework, because holding onto the difference about how people approach it generates conversation and connection around coaching and community.

and it brings people together. So for me, a piece of work like that that hasn't been done in the sport has so many positive outcomes rather than just the one thing that it would achieve at face value.

Mark Carroll (: 48:25

Hmm, there's two parts to it. I welcome back to the I think there's a lot that can be learned from the fact of how you've sort of created a niche for yourself and and my other things Tom I'm always people listen to this are also trying to figure out how can I be strategic and make myself more employable? How can I be strategic and I think there's a lot that can be leveraged from having a For being alien from being someone who can act as a disruptor and come in but and I want to get back to that just to

to chat a bit, how that maybe you might have felt as part of your influence or part of your motivations or there's certain work can come out of that. But one of the things, I think it's a really nice way of, I want to keep on the example you gave around the time traveler metaphor because, and it's the play that was advocate here as well because we'll always think, and I wonder if we could be guilty of doing this as coaches where, you've felt this more vividly, having moved between two different sports, but.

We always, think, we have a habit of comparing maybe the evolution of one sport compared to our own. And where there's sometimes undoubted cases of one sport being a bit behind at times, perhaps. I do however think, and I see this as perhaps a benefit of coaches at the very least taking an interest in other sports, as well you might, and I would maybe say, take away the opinion for a second about what it lacks and try and also focus on what it reminds you of about certain core fundamentals that perhaps in the,

what we might perceive as evolution in a positive light within football. I think there is also arguments to say there are certain things that we've forgot within football that can have a benefit. I think something, I always think one of the things that is a real challenge, I think, is when we look at other sports is how do we position ourselves in terms of being to honest about what a sport does like, but also what it, maybe what either we can't understand fully about it yet or what it reminds us about that we should care more about. Because I always think about instruction is...

is sometimes seen as a bit of a dirty word, isn't it nowadays, particularly around like, you know, the idea of athlete-centered coaching and daily discovery, which all have a lot of pedagogical merit. But I think about instruction and one of the things you said there around safety, you know, like these are legitimate. There's reasons for why and well, for example, I take a little lesson from that because well, football, for example, maybe doesn't, there is an innate rest, but what we might see is what safety is in football might be different, but it's still safety. like,

And again, I know we can argue here a wee bit, but if I'm going to say that actually we should offer structure and be more okay about having to appoint some instruction within football to offer that structure, that is a safer approach in some sense to avoid athletes in some respects, maybe having dips and confidence at different times of play. what we see is safety, it's all subjective. And I just think it's quite interesting. I like the time travel analogy, but I like it both in a way of being reflexive about what.

Tom Hartley (: 51:14

Hmm.

Mark Carroll (: 51:17

how we've brought, what's moving forward, but also what might be forgotten, what's been left in the past, or it shouldn't have been, to a point. You know, I'm just saying I was advocating here to see what that's getting you thinking about, and please disagree with me, but.

Tom Hartley (: 51:28

Well, no, Mark, I see it. like I said earlier, there's no silver bullet. And I think great coaches are able to have a varied diet in the way they approach the work that they do with their athletes. fantastic ex-colleague of mine at UK coaching, Maryanne Davies, has just the wonderful phrase of from handcuffs to handrails. And it resonates so much. And I've been fortunate in the last few weeks in motorsport to be a novice at some stuff.

So stepping into a rally car last week, I've never sat in a rally car in my life. And I went through a day of, a day where I achieved at the end of it, rally driver's license. Now I sat in the car with Mike from the rally school and I needed him to tell me what to do. I needed him to point out when to pull the handbrake on and off and how to use the accelerator and how to use the steering wheel. And if I hadn't have been instructed,

or given clear points about this is the information you need to pay attention to and these are the things in the car that you need to help you get around that corner safely and then consistently, I wouldn't have known where to start. I wouldn't have made any progress through the day. But for me, was this, shall we say, was like a defrosting through the day of where stuff was rigid at the beginning and I was heavily relying on Mike to...

tell me what to do because that gave me some confidence and a level of competence around my abilities in the car. And this just defrosted through the day and the whole piece became more fluid and became more about what I was learning and then applying based on the context. And I thought Mike was incredibly skillful at giving me some freedom in certain things at certain times. And he gave me that freedom through setting some scenarios.

about timing certain parts of the day and then reflecting back on the difference. If you had timed me at the very beginning, it would be pointless because I don't know what I don't know. But there is definitely a dotted line back into football where if you're working with the youngest age group and people who have not played the game before, you need some clear parameters to help them learn the game. Because if they don't know the game and they don't know some of the basic things, then they're not going to get the full enjoyment

from the game, but there's a balance there to be struck around freedom and playfulness and then the coach being able to point out some really solid information. It's funny, I was reflecting on this, if the instructor would have put me in the car at the start of the day and said, go on then, drive around, I'm sure I would have picked up some bits, but it wouldn't have been very economical.

Mark Carroll (: 53:43

Mmm. Mmm.

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 54:12

effective because I wouldn't have known where to look or what to look for and I noticed as the day went on Mike was pointing out to me he started to point out to me use the accelerator more steer less that was the type of information at the beginning of the day and then as the day progressed it was look here watch out for that so it was less reliant on what I was doing with my hands on my feet it was going from that inner focus to an outer focus

Mark Carroll (: 54:33

Hmm.

yeah.

Tom Hartley (: 54:40

And

again, there's definitely a strong crossover into any sport where you're acquiring and developing skill that people need some structure to begin with. But then as a coach, it's your professional judgment and decision-making to recognize that some, and this comes down to the individualization in team sports, within the same practice, some might need some firmer constraints and some might need more where they can just go and experiment and play.

Mark Carroll (: 54:45

Hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm, was that, as you were speaking there, it feels like that almost could be a bit of a glitch to unlocking more learning just for the very fact that when you come into something as an amateur of that particular niche, you're kind of forced to be more open and receptive to new messaging, aren't you? Because you're in a state of, need help, I need support here. And I would wonder then if we're not necessarily challenging coaches who are listening to go and change sport.

Although I'll be honest, I think doing like a coaching exchange even for seven weeks could be really illuminating, but at the very least we challenge them to at least learn a bit more about sport or even dare I say maybe go and do like a level one or something in some different sport. If they feel like they're plateauing, I would wonder if it's often because, and I wonder from your experience obviously working with coach education, some of the things that, one of the main things I always think can be a barrier to greater learning is when

Football is a funny one like this, but I'd imagine a of other sports are as well. Very quickly we can convince ourselves that we've figured out more than we actually know. And what I find is quite an impediment in that respect for learning then at that stage is that I've seen coaches and I've had coaches in front of me and when I'm talking to them, I'm not sure if their ears are really open or if they're using my own voice as a soundboard to their own internal monologue of what they think is happening. And it's like,

And this is something I've wrestled with where I've sat in front of people for an hour and I went away. I don't know if I learned much there. I was talking to myself about what they were talking about a lot. And when I should have really been a bit more naked and just consuming the information and really just assuming that I'm a complete beginner. I just want to just, I think out of the experience you spoke about there Tom, it seems like we can use other sports as a glitch to our own sort of bias and ego to a degree.

because I think that that sometimes gets in the way of coaches learning and it might not necessarily be that they have to learn about the sport technically, but at least take an interest in our sports because we know that our transferable coaching skills, they might just fall upon something that takes them by surprise that then in turn they can benefit from. Does that resonate at all with your experience or what's your thoughts on it?

Tom Hartley (: 57:15

Completely. Yeah,

completely. So I believe there's three things that can get in the way of acquiring knowledge. Perspective, you already see it from your own, struggle to see it from others. Proximity, you're too far away from the detail or you're too close. Ego, you might spend a lot of time defending or inflating your own. So to flip that actually.

to be humble, to be able to move in and out and to better imagine things from other people's point of view could be really helpful for any coach or anyone to be able to learn some new things. And I experienced this actually about two or three years ago. Coincidentally, it was in a motorsport environment whilst I was working at UK coaching and there were some academy drivers from motorsport who spend all their time on a track going into a rally school.

and none of these drivers had ever driven a rally car before and arguably from a hard skill development perspective there's a limited crossover because the way you would handle a rally car going around a corner would be different to a racing car. However the coaches were really skillful, a guy called James Wollzinkraft, in framing this with the drivers around playing with limits.

your margin for taking risks going 120 miles an hour in a Formula 4 car are narrow. You don't really want to take money. But because of that, your ability to explore where my limits are, are diminished. But getting in a rally car, you can play with when am I in control, when am I out of control? How much of the weight am I transferring through different parts of the car? So there is something psychological

about being comfortable with being out of control and then my strategy to be able to get back into it. There's something in there for me about recognising where my sweet spot is in terms of how far am I willing to push myself, what feels like it's quite scary, what feels like I'm going under and it's too comfortable. But you have to step away from your home environment to be able to play with some things.

Mark Carroll (: 59:17

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 59:18

and then

you'll be able to join the dots back into your own context. So you mentioned cross sport and ego and perhaps there was a brilliant opportunity here for coaches to step out of their own environment where they have less skin in the game and they'd feel more comfortable than saying, I don't know, or what's going on here. You can ask those obvious questions because sometimes if you're in your own environment, there's more to lose by saying, I don't know.

Mark Carroll (: 59:22

Hmm.

Hmm. Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 59:45

And I must admit, for me, I've always been very comfortable in saying, being very open to learning and people showing me a different way. But that's probably more about me than anything else. And I can completely understand why not everybody would want to approach things like that. You don't want to show some behaviors to your under 19s the night before the Cup final to say, I'm not quite sure about how to approach tomorrow. showing that vulnerability and that humility in coaching.

Mark Carroll (: 59:45

Yeah.

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 1:00:14

has a time and a place. And I think again from that opportunity to work across and almost be a visitor in another sport. Again, we did this at UK coaching. We would frequently take coaches into different environments so they could experience what coaching looks like somewhere else. And I think just to put someone in another environment might be really difficult because you don't know where to look. You don't know what

Mark Carroll (: 1:00:15

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 1:00:39

start so there might be a lot of noise for the coach. You don't really understand what information is helpful and what isn't. And there might be some frameworks out there or just good questions that help people focus their attention. Bob Muir has a framework which looks at behaviour, athlete behaviour, sorry, coach behaviour, athlete engagement, practice outcomes, practice design. So if I was to take a group of coaches into an environment which was alien to them,

Mark Carroll (: 1:00:50

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 1:01:09

I might use a framework like that to help them pay attention to what are the behaviors you're noticing from the coach during the session. How do those behaviors align to the things the coach is hoping to achieve? All of a sudden then there's a very, very transferable theme that coaches can then base their own values, beliefs and approach to and contrast it with the other environment. And I say contrast, not compare, because the context is different so it's impossible to

Mark Carroll (: 1:01:11

Hmm.

Hmm.

I think that's really powerful, just the fact that you're mentioning about bringing, it's like having a battle plan, or not even a battle plan, but a tactical plan for how you're to make the most of opportunities. So, and this doesn't need to necessarily just be for maybe going on a coaching exchange, as I suggested previously, but if we were to be curious about, what, and it happens for a lot of different reasons, some coaches get burnt out of their own sport, or they look for a fresh challenge, and they want to maybe consider going across, but.

they may have a small window of opportunity either that they allow themselves or that the environment allows them depending on the access they have to this new environment. And could coaches be wasteful if they aren't going in ready and with an understanding of exactly what they should look for and why. And I think what you've given there Tom, it's really great is that that's a means of pay attention to certain things and go in with that outlook of what you're going to pay attention to. Otherwise, maybe the learning is coincidental if it happens at all.

could then become too serendipitally and that's not really a great space to be in in terms of up-stilling or at least getting your feet grounded in a new space if you do decide to make the switch.

Tom Hartley (: 1:02:42

Absolutely. And I think if any coach is thinking about visiting another environment, at least having an understanding of your intentions for visiting would help you just filter or refine some of the things that you notice. Personally, with my background being football and team sport, visiting environments in sport which are different, like swimming as an example, I find fascinating because you have to work a little bit harder.

to be able to notice some of the things that you might transfer or bring back. But I spent some time last year up at the Screen Centre in Manchester watching some coaches from afar. And this is where I suppose my background plays into the stuff that I notice. And in football coaching, your position as a coach is really important. So in practice, you might spend some time in the middle of the field, standing where the action is, putting yourself on the side and

I guess maybe having a flight path in mind about where you want to move to and why throughout your session. Now in swimming, you're limited with that because the environment has some different constraints. But I was drawn to the position of the coach during the swimming session that they didn't just stand at the end of the lane. They moved up and down. They noticed where some of the swimmers were lifting their head out of the water so they put themselves there more frequently so they might be able to share something.

Mark Carroll (: 1:03:42

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 1:04:03

They knew where and when swimmers were taking breaks, so they were strategic about who they moved to and at what point so they could engage in some type of interaction and then let them get back on with it. I suppose the point I'm trying to make here is that when you step into another environment you bring a lot of yourself, so what you might notice as being, well that's good, or I'm not sure about that, that's probably about what you're noticing

Mark Carroll (: 1:04:14

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 1:04:31

clashing with your own beliefs and behaviors as a coach. Because it stands out, it causes attention. So I suppose if coaches were able to park some of the things that they would necessarily do themselves in their own practice and move from measuring things to just being curious. Again, it's really difficult because you can't

Mark Carroll (: 1:04:37

Hmm.

Hmm.

Tom Hartley (: 1:04:54

You can't disassociate yourself and your background and all the things you have as a coach and then what you're noticing, but even just to have that, that, that priming with yourself to be able to free yourself with maybe some of the things you, you hold onto could just open the door to discovering new things.

Mark Carroll (: 1:05:09

Hmm.

No, 100 % I agree. mean, knowledge isn't, we can't become fully blind to the knowledge helps as a criticality to what we see, but insensible appraisal, but it's so true to a degree. And it's almost like, I know what you might term this. I'm just making this up, but it's like, I don't know. It's like a sense of mindfulness. It's like being present as a coach to the experience you've got and not always needing to bring back every other experience you've ever had as a coach into the situation. Sometimes it's a utility to be naked, isn't it? And thinking in that sense, so.

It's absolutely fascinating and I'm so thankful that you've been able to share your reflections on it. There was a lot we spoke about and I wonder if I could challenge you to kind of give us maybe two or three, might call this coach hats that maybe help summarize what we've spoke about so far that you think would be useful for coaches to know who maybe have an interest perhaps in switching sport or at least want to have an interest, more of an interest in other sports for what it might bring back to their own sport.

If I was to challenge an anniversary gig about one of that, if I could challenge you to this, what would they be, do think?

Tom Hartley (: 1:06:13

trying to scroll down three things.

Mark Carroll (: 1:06:14

Yeah, look what stands

out, mean what from what we spoke about and maybe it might even be something we've not had the chance to speak about, this is a good opportunity I think to just summarise that, just I'll butcher it otherwise.

Tom Hartley (: 1:06:26

A change in perspective is huge for coach learning because if you only look at the problems you're facing or the work that you do from one point of view, you fail to see the whole picture. So a change in perspective on a small scale could be asking the players about what they think about the practice and how they could, how they, what feedback they'd give you to get better.

change in perspective on a big scale is going and visiting coaching in a different environment, sport or shared world where you might have to work a little bit harder to join the dots back to what you do. But if you're open to seeing things differently, it could really enrich the work that you do. I'd say being linked to that, being curious and maybe holding some of your beliefs lightly. I was reading a book last year.

can't remember the author again, but it was called Think Again. And the author in the book talked about the value of updating your beliefs and how some people find that really difficult because it might hurt their ego slightly because they said something, they've said A and now they're saying B. But actually...

some of the underlying beliefs I have as a coach that have stayed with me through my whole coaching journey. I'm incredibly focused on the experience of young people, a holistic approach to development. But the way I've gone about achieving those things have probably changed and evolved through the years. If my beliefs would have been cement from day one, I probably wouldn't have developed or been able to experience things I have.

So that curiosity and the ability to adapt and update is massive. And then the final thing that we spoke about a little bit today that might be really valuable is don't copy and paste because what works in one environment won't necessarily work in another because of the context, because of what you're trying to achieve, because of the people who are in front of you. think coaches need to quite

carefully about what do they apply, adapt and maybe then reject from another environment. So it suits what you're trying to achieve. So if you're a tourist and you're going off and visiting other worlds or other sports or another team, it's about what you bring back with you to your home space is huge. So yeah, there'd be my three. Change your perspective.

be curious, don't copy and paste, would be maybe some overarching headlines from the conversation.

Mark Carroll (: 1:08:56

Thank you so much Tom and we'll call it that. Thank you for coming in Tom and speaking to us about that and hopefully those that are listening found this just as interesting as what I certainly did. So thank you and we will see you guys next time.