THE POWER AND IMPOTENCE OF WORDS

Harty, ironically for a bloke who contributes 6000 words a month to this mag, challenges the use of them.

- Peter Hart

Research reveals we take in only about 25% of what is said to us – and if it involves a parent talking to a teenage child, I suspect it’s probably 24% less than that. It’s news that’s both sobering and interesting to the coach/teacher trying to get a point across, but it affirms what we’ve always known, that poor coaches tend to over-explain, while the best are famous for their verbal economy.

I once interviewed Matthew Pinsent, multiple gold medal winning Olympic rower and asked him about his coach Jurgen Grobler, the most successful in rowing history. He said sometimes Jurgen would go for weeks without saying a thing – apart from “Ja, gut boys,” at the end of a session – which was totally at odds with the stereotype of the bloke cycling next to his team on the towpath, bellowing unremitting commands through a loud hailer. Although sometimes Matthew and his crew craved a bit more input, they knew his silence meant everything was all going in the right direction, and that they were working it out for themselves - which is essential in a race where there’ll be no one there to tell you what to do if things start going wrong. Jurgen was a coach, who in the subtlest of ways, encouraged self-coaching.