ABSTRACT
This book follows on from Advances in rugby coaching: An holistic approach, which I wrote with John Evans, Stephen Harvey and Rémy Hassanin (2015), to further develop an holistic approach to coaching but with a focus on individual sports. Holism is a philosophical concept that sees parts of a whole as being intimately interconnected to the point that they cannot exist independently of the whole and cannot be understood without reference to the whole. As Aristotle claimed, ‘The whole is greater than the sum of its parts’. Holism is opposed to epistemological reductionism, which claims that a complex system can be explained and understood by reducing it to its fundamental parts. From an ontological perspective, holism is opposed to atomism, which sees the world as being composed of an indefinite number of things exclusively characterized by intrinsic properties. However, this does not mean that taking an holistic position necessarily denies access to the tools of analytic analysis and particularly in regard to intentional phenomena (Esfeld, 1998). The Game Sense approach to coaching team sports provides an example of a
coaching approach that sits upon holistic philosophy. It focuses on the game as a whole and considers all aspects of play such as tactical knowledge, skill execution, awareness and decision-making as being inseparably interconnected. Conversely, coaching that divides the game into fundamental techniques that are drilled and refined out of the context of the game is underpinned by epistemological reductionism and atomistic ontology. It reduces the game to discrete components. My reference to an holistic coaching approach in this book includes views of a skill such as throwing or running as complex phenomena in which the various techniques involved are interrelated and, although they can be focused on in coaching, must be developed in relation to the whole skill. It also refers to an holistic view of humans
as complex beings that cannot be reduced to component parts such as the mind, body, emotions and spirit. Drawing on Davis, Sumara and Luce-Kapler (2000), it could be described as being a complex approach rather than a complicated (mechanistic) one.
