Modified and adapted from Brian McCormick and Chris Nedelcovych
It is a balance between competency and innovation.
An emphasis on ‘controls’ will stifle discovery while too little offers no guidance or measure.
It is not a matter of either ‘sharpening the point’ or ‘broadening the view’. It is the ability of the teacher /coach to move appropriately between the two.
Training is a “reductionist goal; its aim is to refine an existing action.” Education is an “expansive goal; its aim is to increase the number of potential actions.”
Winning and losing often turns a developmental or educative environment into a training environment, even with young players. Certainly offer them the opportunity of learning to compete, win and lose but take great care that you don’t create an environment where you skew the process to the right (robotic, dogmatic) with the developing athlete. Make sure you know when you are ‘instructing’ them and when they are ‘learning’.
The Coaching journey usually starts with the athlete receiving a set of simple instructions but will eventually reach the stage of a ‘partnership’ where the ownership of the process is shared. The greater the ‘learning’ in the early stages of the coach / athlete relationship the easier the transition to a well-rounded partnership.