Professor Adam Nicholls: The cost of closeness

Professor Adam Nicholls: The cost of closeness

I came across Adam Nicholls on LinkedIn and his posts kept stopping me. Short clips of Klopp, Popovich, Steve Kerr - with Adam quietly unpacking the psychology of what they're actually doing. Not tactics, not systems. The human stuff. Care, compassion, what it looks like to genuinely back the people you coach. So I reached out and invited him on to the podcast. Professor of Sport and Exercise Psychology at the University of Hull, over 85 published papers, three books including Psychology in Sports Coaching. And outside of all that, a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu who competes at the British Open and uses his own experiences of standing in a competitive bullpen waiting to be called to the mat to test the psychology he researches.   Three Key Messages 1. Tough and compassionate aren't opposites This came up early and kept coming back. Adam posts a lot about coaches like Popovich, Saban and Ferguson - coaches with reputations for being hard, demanding, sometimes brutal. And what sits underneath that, consistently, is genuine love for the people they coach. Adam's point is simple. You don't get to choose between creating a tough environment and creating a caring one. The best coaches do both at the same time. A coach who doesn't care enough to challenge their athletes isn't being kind - they're just being easy.   2. The closeness finding In a study of over 200 athletes, he and his colleagues found that the closer the coach-athlete relationship, the more pressure an athlete can feel not to let their coach down. The relationship itself becomes an added stressor. Think about it like this - having your best friend watch you parallel park is harder than doing it in front of a stranger. The care makes the stakes feel higher. Adam's answer isn't to back off and keep your distance. It's to name it. Tell your athletes explicitly - your relationship with me has nothing to do with how you perform today. I'm in your corner regardless.   3. Coping is a skill Adam's research on what effective coping actually looks like is full of useful ideas. Ineffective coping - speeding up your routine to escape the moment, withdrawing from the game, just stopping trying - is more common than you'd think even at the highest level. Effective coping looks like slowing down, logically working through what's happening, using visualisation, breathing properly. None of this is complicated. But most athletes don't do it deliberately, and that's exactly the gap a good coach can close.   Coach Logic Really pleased to share that the podcast is developing a partnership with Coach Logic. From future episodes onwards the partnership means real coaching challenges to try out between episodes, and conversations with coaches who've been paying attention to how they coach and what they've noticed when they do. More details coming very soon. Find out more about Coach Logic here: https://www.coach-logic.com   Get in Touch Tom's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/] Coach Logic: https://www.coach-logic.com [https://www.coach-logic.com]   Adam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-adam-nicholls-77453b20b/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-adam-nicholls-77453b20b/]

Mark Cairns & Andy Muir: It's how, not what

Mark Cairns and Andy Muir are the co-founders of Coach Logic, calling in from their bothy in Edinburgh - which, for anyone not from Scotland, is a shelter in the mountains. They haven't climbed a literal mountain to get there, but the metaphor isn't a bad one for what they're trying to do. Both rugby. Mark is a coach educator for World Rugby across Europe and comes from a PE teaching background. Andy has lectured in sports science at Edinburgh College. They built Coach Logic because coaches have no consistent way of knowing what they actually do when they coach. This conversation is about finding a solution to that - and it's a really good one.   Three Key Messages 1. How you coach matters more than what you coach Content is everywhere. YouTube, social media, coaching courses - finding out what to do in a session has never been easier. What's harder, and what makes the bigger difference, is the delivery. The question you asked and then immediately answered yourself. The huddle you called with nothing planned to say. That's the stuff that shapes how players experience their coach - and coaches need help seeing what is happening with clarity.   2. You coach from perception - and perception can be wrong Andy watched himself back and discovered that the high-tempo sessions he'd designed were wiping out everything else he thought he was doing. The open questions, the space, the relationships. None of it intentional. None of it clearly visible until he looked. This isn't unusual - it's can be what happens when you're coaching 18 players in 90 minutes. But you can do something about it when you see it.   3. Film yourself coaching A £10 microphone. A chest harness from Amazon. That's the starting point. Film a session, find two or three moments that stand out – and make a plan to be intentional for next time.   Other Things Worth Knowing What SAM does SAM - the Session Analysis Model - is Coach Logic's latest development. Upload coaching footage from your phone and SAM automatically analyses your coaching behaviours. Types of questions asked, feedback given, key interactions. No grades, no judgment, no tick boxes. Just a clear breakdown of what happened, which you can use on your own or with a coach developer to find the moments worth looking at and talking about. The data isn't the point - the conversation it makes possible is. Sort your audio first Before anything else. A wide pitch shot tells you about body language and positioning. It tells you almost nothing about what the coach actually said or how they said it. A chest harness with your phone captures your audio and your point of view. A second camera at the side of the pitch gives you the wider context. Both together is the ideal setup and neither costs much. Mark's advice - buy a microphone and a tripod long before you think about GPS units. The infrastructure point For the next generation of coaches, filming themselves and reflecting on what they see won't feel like a new idea - it'll just be what coaches do. Like having a session plan or using a whiteboard. The question is whether you wait for that to become normal or get ahead of it now. As Andy puts it, the return on improving yourself as a coach will outstrip almost anything else you can spend your money on.   Find Out More Coach Logic: https://www.coach-logic.com [https://www.coach-logic.com]   Get in Touch Tom's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/] Andy’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/muirandrew/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/muirandrew/] Mark’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maccairns/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/maccairns/]

Jen Coe: Safe to grow

Jen Coe is an HCPC Registered Sport Psychologist, Senior Lead for Workforce Development at the Football Association, and someone who has spent 25 years in sport from playground to podium. Before the FA she worked at UK Coaching supporting coaches across 13 high performance Olympic sports, and prior to that as Performance Wellbeing Lead in the WSL. She is a former international basketball player, and co-author of four books with the brilliant Amy Whitehead. Jen is a good friend and a former colleague at UK Coaching, where she inspired me every day.   Three Key Messages 1. Coach development is at its best when people feel safe to grow Jen's opening answer to the very first question, and honestly one of the best one-liners anyone has offered on this podcast. It sounds simple but it carries a lot of weight. Safety to grow isn't just about being nice or creating a comfortable environment. It's about clarity, intention, honest dialogue, and creating the conditions for people to be genuinely vulnerable without fear of what happens next.   2. Observation before intervention One of the most immediately stealable ideas in the conversation. Don't rush to fix. Sit with what you're seeing. Notice the tensions a coach is carrying before you decide what to do about them. Jen talks about the movement in a coaching relationship - how naming what's there, rather than glossing over it, is often what shifts things.   3. Model vulnerability, and mean it Jen's game-changing advice builds to a really important point. When leaders and coaches show up as the finished article - polished, certain, never wrong - they fill the room. There is literally no space for anyone else to contribute. But the moment you say I got that wrong, I'm not sure about this, what do you think, something opens up. Learning accelerates. People lean in. Jen's challenge to coaches is simple: start with one honest question at the end of a session, answer it yourself first, and hold the space for others to follow. When you model vulnerability, you give everyone else permission to be honest too.   Other Things Worth Knowing The five dysfunctions of a team Jen introduces Patrick Lencioni's framework in the context of coach development. At the base - absence of trust. Then fear of conflict, leading to artificial harmony and meetings that go nowhere. Lack of commitment when debate is shallow. Avoidance of accountability when commitment is weak. And at the top - inattention to results when individual ego overtakes collective purpose.   Naming the tensions A really practical idea from Jen, deliberately naming the tensions a coach is carrying rather than talking around them. Performance versus politics. Development versus survival. These are real pressures coaches live with and pretending they're not there doesn't make them go away.   The books Jen co-authored four books with Dr Amy Whitehead - Myths of Sport Coaching, Myths of Sport Performance, Women Working in Sport, and a fourth title on the myths of sports and exercise psychology. All of them are accessible, challenging and built around the idea of checking and challenging the things that have been accepted as truth in sport for too long. Jen talks in the episode about curriculum being rewritten on the back of the first book and coaches globally reaching out to contributors. Browse all titles at the publisher's website below: Sequoia Books: https://www.sequoia-books.com/catalog/ [https://www.sequoia-books.com/catalog/]   Get in Touch Tom's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/] Jen's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-coe-1a308a49/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-coe-1a308a49/] Sequoia Books: https://www.sequoia-books.com/catalog/ [https://www.sequoia-books.com/catalog/]

3v3 Special: Fit for the future

Recorded live at St George's Park at the Football Association's 3v3 showcase event, this episode is a little different in format, multiple conversations across the day with former England internationals, FA staff, grassroots coaches and parents, all exploring one of the most significant changes to children's football in a generation. From next season, under 7s football in England moves to a 3v3 format. No referees, no coaches dictating from the sideline. Just children playing football. This episode explores what that means, why it matters, and what coaches can do to make the most of it.   Three Key Messages   1. Get out of the way and let them play 3v3 asks children to trust the children. No referees, no instructions from the sideline, no adults solving problems that children are more than capable of solving themselves. Children self-officiate, communicate, lead. They do on a proper pitch exactly what they do on the playground. And they love it. 2. More touches, more decisions, more love for the game The numbers are hard to argue with. A child playing 3v3 gets 100% of their potential playing time. In a 5v5 format with substitutions, that can drop to as little as five hours of actual football across a season. More time on the ball means more decisions, more problems to solve, more moments where a child can feel the game.   3. This is bigger than a format change 3v3 is not just a smaller version of the game. It is a philosophy. It is the FA saying clearly that children's football should be designed around children - their rights, their enjoyment, their development as people as well as players.    Get in Touch Tom's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/]

Craig Morris: Prepared, not planned

Craig Morris spent 20 years as Podium Technical Coach at Paddle UK, coaching across three Olympic disciplines - kayak, canoe and kayak cross - and overseeing three athletes to four Olympic medals across Tokyo and Paris 2024. At Paris he coached Kimberley Woods to double bronze and Adam Burgess to silver in the men's canoe. Since leaving British Canoeing he has moved into coach development, working across multiple sports.   Three Key Messages 1. Prepared, not planned Craig's game plan contribution is one of the most immediately useful ideas in the whole series, and it came directly from one of his athletes, Adam Burgess, during a review of the Tokyo Olympics campaign. The idea sits on a continuum. At one end, meticulously scripted practice with everything timed and controlled. At the other, turning up with no intention or direction whatsoever. Neither extreme serves the athlete well. The sweet spot in the middle is what Craig calls a zone of presence - leaning into what you know to be stable in your sport while staying genuinely open and responsive to what emerges. In canoe slalom, the river doesn't care about your plan. The best performers are the ones prepared for anything, not the ones who've rehearsed everything.   2. Coach alongside, not above A thread that runs through the whole conversation. Craig describes the shift in his coaching from a place of technical certainty, where he had the model, he had the answers, and the athlete's job was to fulfil his vision, to something far more collaborative and genuinely curious. Coaching with, not to. Situating yourself alongside the performer rather than above them. He talks about sessions becoming noisier, more joyful, athletes taking more ownership and showing more patience with problems. And athletes having longer careers because they found a new love for the sport.   3. What do we need to let go of to see things as they truly are? Craig's closing question to coaches is one of the most honest things anyone has brought to the game plan. It comes from a long personal journey of recognising that when you have a rigid technical model of performance, you risk seeing only what you want to see rather than what's actually happening. What might you be getting in the way of?   Other Things Worth Knowing The wisdom of not-knowing Craig co-authored a paper with Keith Davids and Carl Woods called On the Wisdom of Not-Knowing: Reflections of an Olympic Canoe Slalom Coach, published in Sport, Education and Society. The paper questions whether coaches in high performance environments have come to rely too heavily on secondary information - data, reports, analysis - at the expense of what the world is sharing with them directly. It's a genuinely thought-provoking read and sits right at the heart of everything Craig talked about in this conversation. Well worth tracking down. Read it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13573322.2022.2140135 [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13573322.2022.2140135]   Verbs above nouns A small but significant idea that Craig picked up from researcher Carl Woods. Thinking about coaching in terms of verbs rather than nouns. Response-able as a skill, not just responsibility as a concept. Performing as an ongoing verb, not a fixed outcome.   The adaptability folder A very practical idea. Craig used to keep a folder on his desktop collecting clips of moments where his athletes adapted brilliantly, situations that previously might have been labelled mistakes, but reframed as evidence of responsiveness and skill. Over time his athletes started bringing moments to him, asking for them to be added. They were actively looking for opportunities to be adaptable.   Skilled intentionality Craig introduces this idea, keeping as many options open for as long as possible, as the hallmark of the best performers. He draws on the work of a coaching colleague who describes it as poker not chess - always playing with a rich hand available rather than committing too early. It's a useful lens for thinking about what you're actually trying to develop when you design practice.   Let the practice breathe Craig talks about the importance of not filling every gap, giving athletes time and space to sit with problems, struggle productively, and find their own solutions. The framing and contracting you do before and after a session matters as much as what happens during it.   Get in Touch Tom's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/] Craig's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-morris-1768b81b2/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-morris-1768b81b2/]