This is the final episode of series two, and it's a fitting way to close things out. Rather than a single coaching idea or a piece of research, this conversation zooms out to look at the systems and structures that sit behind coach learning and development.

Tom Causer is National Coach Education Manager at Badminton Ireland, originally from High Wycombe and now based in Moira in Northern Ireland. He works across an all-island governing body covering everyone from volunteer grassroots coaches through to coaches working with Olympic players. He is currently leading a number of ambitious projects to transform how coaches in badminton learn, grow and feel supported, and the thinking behind it is well worth borrowing whatever sport you work in.

Three Key Messages

1. Formal coach education lays the foundation, but the magic happens elsewhere Tom is clear that coaching qualifications still have real value and a genuine place in any coach development system. But the research is equally clear that meaningful learning happens in the non-formal and informal spaces - communities of practice, reflective conversations, contextual CPD, peer learning. What Badminton Ireland are building is a suite of micro-learning modules, in-situ coach developer support, and technology-enabled reflection that sits alongside the formal pathway rather than replacing it. The goal is to make all of it contextual - learning that happens in the environment where the coach actually works.

2. Coaches need to feel part of something Coaching can be a lonely business. You turn up, you deliver, you go home. Tom talks about the ambition to flip that - to use technology to connect coaches with coach developers for regular reflective conversations, starting with just two hours a year and building from there. Not a heavy investment, not another thing to squeeze into an already full week, but a consistent check-in. He uses the analogy of an MOT - coaches have traditionally just done the big formal thing when they had to. What he is building is something closer to a regular service. Little and often. Someone there who sees what you're doing and helps you get better.

3. Get out of your lane Tom's game-changing advice and something that has shaped my own journey too. The worst thing a coach can do is stay entirely within their own sport, their own environment, their own network. Go and watch a coach developer from a different sport work. Shadow someone doing something completely different. Talk to people you would never normally talk to - a sleep coach, a drama teacher, a musician. The ideas are everywhere once you start looking.

The Coaching Expertise Model Developed primarily by Dr Vinny Webb alongside Tom, this model provides a framework for thinking about coach learning and development across the full pathway - from entry-level volunteers through to coaches working in high performance environments. It maps the emphasis of different curriculum areas - health and safety, technical and tactical, self-awareness, pedagogy, coach-athlete relationship - against the context the coach is working in and the level of the pathway they're operating at. Crucially it is non-linear, reflecting the reality that neither athlete nor coach journeys happen in neat, predictable steps. It's a useful tool whether you're starting from a blank piece of paper or checking and challenging a system that's already well established.

View the model here: https://www.badmintonireland.com/page/get-involved/coaching/coaching-expertise-model

Series 3 coming soon...

Series two is done. Series three is on its way - with practical coaching challenges to try between episodes and conversations with coaches who have been paying attention to how they coach and what they've found when they do. More details coming soon.

Get in Touch

Tom Hartley's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/

Tom Causer's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-causer-msc-61a553a1/

Badminton Ireland Coaching Expertise Model: https://www.badmintonireland.com/page/get-involved/coaching/coaching-expertise-model

Coach Logic: https://www.coach-logic.com

Stephen Maxwell is a man who wears a lot of hats, and wears them well. Coach and Match Official Education Manager at Cricket Ireland, director of coaching across four Gaelic Games codes, founder of No Other Game Around Performance Consultants, and a researcher whose MSc thesis at the University of Limerick was titled Do Coaches Fill Their Own Cups. He completed that degree with first-class honours, and his research on self-care in coaching is something he now shares with coaches and organisations across sport and business. He started coaching at 14, has worked across multiple sports and multiple countries, and brings a warmth and practicality to this topic that makes it feel useful rather than abstract.

Three Key Messages

1. You are the most important person: Not in a self-centred way, Stephen is clear on that. This is about being person-centred rather than coach-centred. Every coach arrives at training carrying something from the rest of their life. The commute, the difficult meeting, the argument that's still rattling around. Whether they're aware of it or not, that stuff comes with them onto the pitch. Stephen's challenge to coaches is simple - what's your process for parking that before you meet your players? Breath work, voice notes, a few minutes of silence in the car. Whatever works for you. Because if you arrive as your best self consistently, the people you coach feel that. And if you don't, they feel that too.

2. Mind full to mindful: Gold Dust! Stephen talks about the difference between a mind that is full - cluttered, stressed, running on empty - and being mindful, present, and genuinely engaged with what's in front of you. Self-care, he argues, is the process of moving from one to the other. And it looks different for everyone. Stephen walks his dog at seven every morning, no phone. Someone else might journal, meditate, or go for a run. The point isn't the activity, it's the intention behind it. Knowing your triggers, understanding what drains you and what restores you, and being deliberate about building that into your day.

3. JEF - Judge Effort First: A player beats three defenders, goes for a shot and misses. The coach focuses on the miss. Stephen's question is a simple one - what did you actually see? Because what you choose to recognise shapes what your players believe about themselves, and that matters far more than any single result. Focusing on process over outcome isn't soft, it is how you build confidence, sustain development, and create an environment where players want to keep trying. Judge the effort. The outcomes will follow.

Get in Touch

Tom's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/ Stephen's LinkedIn: https://ie.linkedin.com/in/stephenmax2404 No Other Game Around: https://www.nogaspc.com

Rob Gray is a Professor of Human Systems Engineering at Arizona State University and host of the brilliant Perception and Action Podcast. With over 25 years of experience he has worked with elite sports teams including MLB and NBA franchises, and is the author of How We Learn to Move, How to Be an Ecological Coach, and Learning to Optimize Movement. He's one of the biggest names going in ecological dynamics and the constraints-led approach, and has this rare gift of taking genuinely dense science and making it sound like the most obvious thing in the world. His main applied sport is baseball, though his work spans golf, tennis, driving, cycling and even martial arts.

Three Key Messages

1. The environment should do most of the talking Picture watching a really skilful coach at work, what you'd notice is how little they actually say. Time spent designing the practice. Constraints that create problems for athletes to solve. The coach stepping in occasionally to guide rather than constantly instruct. It's a shift from coach as the holder of all the answers to coach as designer and guide, someone who sets problems rather than prescribes solutions.

2. Repetition without repetition One of the standout ideas in this episode, borrowed from neuroscientist Nicolai Bernstein. We don't get better by repeating the same movement over and over. We get better by repeating outcomes while constantly adapting the movement that produces them.

3. Make the mistake loud Mistakes aren't something to rescue athletes from, they're information. At the right level of challenge, a mistake tells an athlete almost everything they need to know to fix it next time. The coach's job is to understand why a mistake happened and design the next problem accordingly.

Find Rob's Work

The Perception & Action Podcast: http://perceptionaction.com

Rob's books: How We Learn to Move, How to Be an Ecological Coach, Learning to Optimize Movement

Get in Touch

Tom's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/

Rob’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-gray-8232b417/