Sports coach - High Performance Coach

This occupation is found in the sport and physical activity sector in high-performance, community and school environments.

HIGH PERFORMANCE SPORT COACHES: develop athletes and players in high-performance settings, including those on talent or development pathways, national or international programmes, professional or podium environments.

COMMUNITY SPORT COACHES: motivate and engage people of all ages and abilities in community sports and physical activity settings. Community sport includes local authority, charity and national governing body of sport community initiatives or clubs.

SCHOOL SPORT COACHES: collaborate with teachers to develop pupils’ mastery of psychomotor skills by applying a whole child approach in their coaching. They work in all categories of school and registered childcare environments.

The broad purpose of the Sport Coach occupation is to use extensive technical and tactical sports knowledge and skills to design and deliver coaching programmes that engage, motivate and evolve participants’ skills and performance.

Sport coaches aim to provide meaningful and high-quality learning, development and performance experiences. They support the achievement of medals in talent, national and international competition, enrich performance in local competitions, increase participation, raise educational standards, enhance wellbeing and drive social change. Sport coaches can influence national wellness to reduce burden on the National Health Service.

In their daily work, a sports coach interacts with and influences the coaching team including assistant coaches, coaches, managers, sponsors, boards and wider industry support networks. They do this through the design and delivery of their own coaching philosophy and professional practices in line with the organisational visions, strategies, policies and processes. They may also influence professional and governing bodies through their own practice. Sports Coaches measure the impact of their coaching strategies through analysis of participant, coach, coaching team and organisational perception and performance data. This is then benchmarked against local, national and international trends relevant to the environment in which they are coaching.

Sports coaches work both autonomously and collaboratively to deliver progressive programmes that align to wider curriculum plans. These are tailored to individuals and diverse groups of participants based on robust profiling techniques and whole person development needs.

HIGH PERFORMANCE SPORTS COACHES design and deliver coaching programmes that focus on the acceleration of sustainable development and high performance of athletes/players to enhance the national and international positioning of the sport.

High performance sport coaches profile athlete/player bio-psycho-social attributes, as well as their sport-specific technical and tactical skills to set development and performance goals. These are then used to inform the creation of a high-level curriculum plan that considers practice and competition schedules.

Stakeholders in this context include athletes, players, parents, peers, managers, sponsors, professional organisations, national governing bodies and performance support staff such as sport scientists, sports medics and performance analysts.

COMMUNITY SPORT COACHES design and deliver coaching programmes that focus on sustainable engagement and enrichment of participants. They use targeted approaches to the deliver sport and physical activity through community initiatives or clubs, considering Sport England participation and wider government agendas.

Community sport coaches profile participant’s cognitive, social, emotional and physical development needs. They measure participant motives, behavioural norms, psychomotor, technical and tactical skills in specific sport and physical activity contexts to enable goals to be agreed. These results are used to create a high-level curriculum plan that considers the annual and sporting seasons. They apply a ‘whole person/child’ development approach and create targeted interventions to promote the accessibility of sessions for diverse groups of participants. In setting the plans they will consider the community support systems and gaps in current provision.

Stakeholders in this environment include children, parents, assistant coaches, peers, managers and other community support safeguarding staff. Wider networks include facility managers, local authority staff, charitable workforces and national governing body regional teams.

SCHOOL SPORT COACHES design and deliver coaching programmes that focus on the acceleration of sustainable mastery of children’s psychomotor skills and wider physical education standards.

School sport coaches profile children’s cognitive, social, emotional and physical development needs. They measure psychomotor, technical and tactical skills in a range of physical activity contexts drawn from the Department for Education’s National Curriculum to enable physical education targets to be agreed. These results are used to create a high-level curriculum plan that considers school term schedules and a ‘whole child’ development approach.

Stakeholders in this environment include children, parents, carers, peers, support staff, such as SENCO and safeguarding officers, teaching assistants, teachers, head teachers and school boards. Wider networks include local authority teams and social services.