ABSTRACT
Sports coaching: its purpose, what it is, and how it differs from teaching According to Lyle (2011), the purpose of sports coaching is to improve the performance of an athlete or sports team. Providing a definition of sports coaching that fully encapsulates what it is, can be somewhat problematic and goes much beyond this introduction. There are a number of extensive commentaries regarding what sport coaching is and how it can be conceptualised (Cushion, 2007a, 2007b; Lyle, 2007).
