Working with coaches and their teams in youth and collegiate sport in the USA: A Commentary

Introduction

Sport psychology literature contains many accounts of mental training consultants working with teams from youth sport to the highest levels of amateur and professional sports. Recently, Simon Jenkins interviewed Andy Gillham about his career as a full-time coaching consultant at the youth and collegiate levels. We found the article quite illuminating, and we enjoyed being privy to the ins and outs of this unique and innovative career. This commentary will focus on information contained in Jenkins’ interview, emphasizing Gillham’s professional journey, his implementation of evidence-based coaching, and the importance of resiliency.

Gillham’s journey

The article focuses on the life and career of Dr Andy Gillham, the owner of Ludus Consulting, which he formed in 2013. The reader learns that Gillham never intended to become a full-time coaching consultant for sport teams. Rather, his profession likely emerged as a result of luck, chance, hard work, and the possession of a distinct skill set. Gillham entered his PhD following a Bachelor of Science degree in fitness with a coaching concentration and a master’s degree in human performance. He felt fortunate to have been accepted into a PhD given that he had little background in the social sciences. It is likely that his supervisor saw some interpersonal and professional skills in Gillham that would make him a competent graduate student and an effective consultant. Related to his PhD dissertation at the University of Idaho, Gillham worked on the creation of a coaching success questionnaire, a task that helped him complete his PhD requirements as well as assisting his initial ventures as a coaching consultant.

Over the course of his personal journey, Gillham acquired a variety of coaching and applied sport psychology knowledge that provided him with expertise that informed his coaching consultation business. With regard to his acquisition of coaching knowledge, Gillham engaged primarily in formal learning (i.e. large-scale curriculum-based education) and to a lesser extent informal learning (i.e. intentional or incidental learning opportunities).^1,2 With respect to the latter, Gillham acquired some valuable knowledge through his athletic experiences in football and as an assistant coach. These forms of informal learning experiences are also typically used by sport coaches who are learning their trade.^3,4 What sets Gillham apart from developing coaches is his extensive experience within formalized learning structures, such as his undergraduate and master’s degrees, his strength and conditioning coaching certification through the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), and notably his PhD at the University of Idaho during which he became a certified sport psychology consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP). Gillham’s formal and informal learning background and experiences help explain his career progression and how he is able to implement evidence-based strategies in his consultation work.

Evidence-based coaching: Moving from theory to practice

Theory to practice is an important and unique element of sport psychology. Our journals are replete with coaching articles that have taken complex and multidimensional theories and translated them into practical interventions that helped athletes and teams achieve both personal satisfaction and enhanced athletic performance. For example, Mallett ⁵ integrated self-determination theory/research^6,7 into his coaching practices to create an autonomy-supportive motivational climate in preparing his athletes for the 2004 Olympics. Finding success in his approach, Mallett concluded that “the utility of adopting an approach to coaching on sound research in preference to adopting traditional cultural coaching practices has great merit” (p. 428). ⁵ There are some notable similarities between Mallett’s use of evidence-based practice with his Olympic team and Gillham’s work as a coaching consultant. For example, Gillham’s PhD dissertation involved the creation of a questionnaire that focused on the coach’s impact on winning during competitions. ⁸ It was intended to provide coaches, athletic directors, and consultants with valuable information to improve team or individual performance. ⁹ According to Gillham, the practical and easy to understand nature of this instrument helped to open a lot of doors early in his career. It reinforces the adage that coaches, athletes, and administrators prefer objective measures that can quickly be translated into more victories.

Interestingly, as Gillham’s career progressed, he has relied much less on the use of this questionnaire, opting to implement other theoretical concepts and research into his consulting practice. For instance, drawing upon the tenets of group dynamics, Gillham helped a women’s volleyball team improve their cohesiveness by overcoming ego orientation in individual athletes. This improved task cohesion, which is associated with enhanced team performance and success. ¹⁰ He also implemented principles underlying contemporary theories of motivation, such as self-determination theory’s basic psychological needs (autonomy, relatedness, and competence ⁷ ) to empower athletes. For instance, he created a sense of autonomy and relatedness in young figure skaters simply by establishing parental guidelines and implementing a “tie your own skates” policy. He also empowered a softball pitcher by providing her with the chance to establish “her rules for pitching.” Suffice it to say, all of these examples demonstrate the value and merit of transporting theories and research into actual team examples.

Resiliency

Resiliency, or psychological resilience, is an often-used term in sport psychology, describing a response to some type of setback or adversity, followed by a conceptually appropriate positive adaptation. ¹¹ As an indication of the importance placed on resilience in the sport context, some researchers have suggested that resilience is a prerequisite to achieving success. ¹² Based on Gillham’s experiences, it appears that those who are interested in a coaching consultation career may also require a certain degree of resiliency. Indeed, it was very interesting and refreshing for Jenkins to present a number of practical examples from Gillham’s consulting career that helped show the highs and the lows, such as the challenges and obstacles that he has dealt with throughout his career. Too often, sport psychology is glamorized, and only the success stories are publically shared. We always learn more from the stories that did not go as planned, such as Gillham’s experience with leadership issues on a college soccer team or the challenges of team cohesion that emerged during his work with a women’s softball team. Both of these situations revealed that a consultant will experience various amounts of both successes and setbacks, just like the athletes and teams that they work with.

Conclusion

We were fascinated reading the article that detailed the journey and career of full-time coaching consultant Dr Andy Gillham. We commend Simon Jenkins for identifying the need for this type of article and for encouraging Gillham to share his story. We are equally appreciative for Gillham’s humility, candor, and willingness to share his professional history. As a result, we are left with the following thoughts:

Would Gillham recommend this career for aspiring coaching consultants?

Suffice it to say Dr Andy Gillham is living a very interesting life. He has taken his unique knowledge and background in the sport sciences and created a career that few of us working in this field could have envisioned. We are grateful for reading his story and hope to see others following in his footsteps.