When you first pass your boxing coaching course in either amateur or the professional code, plus any other add ons which today’s society requires you to have, first aid, safeguarding, CRB (criminal records bureau) DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) and you become licensed to operate as a boxing coach, what is your ambition? Do you just want to help with the young kids, supervise the exercise regimes, work with different levels of boxing abilities, concentrate on top class boxers? There are quite a portfolio of tasks in front of you, and there is a shed-load of best practice as advised by governing bodies to incorporate and follow.
What will be your coaching style? Yes, I’ve seen great variations in style, and yes, you will have your own style for sure. How will you carry your authority in the gym, with boxers, their family, friends of boxers and in the case of pro boxers, managers, matchmakers, coaches and promoters. Believe me there may be some point in your coaching career where you will be tested to one degree or the other by one or more of these factions. It all comes with the position you now hold.
It’s a fact that your ‘soft skills’ will form a very important aspect of your coaching career, so will your boxing integrity in terms of the ‘messaging’ you radiate from the position of your new authority. The eyes of the world will be upon you, or at least ‘your’ own small world anyway. If you are inconsistent in any way you will be criticised. Boxers will absorb everything you utter and it must be consistent and you must have no favourites.
The expression ‘losing the gym’ is a very real concept, so is losing a boxer or boxers, people will leave and look for pastures new, or they will stay, and it all depends on you. I doubt any licensing course will teach you about psychology but you will do well to understand fundamentally the process of learning how to treat and respect people of all types, whether boxers or otherwise.
If you are lucky enough to have an experienced coach leading the gym then it will pay to watch and learn more closely than ever before about everything going on in the club and gym. The aim is to add-to and compliment the gym, making it stronger better and more resilient as a unit. Good quality additions to any gym, be it helpers, more coaches or boxers, and are like gold dust. Your aim should be to be considered as gold dust yourself to those already in the club.
Cultivating a gym full of people who respect you should be the aim. Key words should be respect, fairness, welfare, ethics, morality, sincerity, example, trust, understanding, compassion, confidentiality, authority, dependability, knowledge, communication, ambition, approachable, relationships and teamwork. Last but not least, ‘development’, both of yourself and all boxers.
You are not everyone’s mate, you are now a leader, an officially recognised and fully licensed leader. You will want your boxers and everyone else to pull in the same direction, breed confidence and establish pathways to sporting success. You don’t play at boxing, it’s hard work, and growth is incremental and proportionate to your coaching and boxing skills and ambitions.
I’ll repeat my mantra, my aim is not to give a ‘how to’ book. But to stimulate your own thinking about where and how you want to progress your coaching skills. Consider my input simply as a set of signposts for your own boxing journey, or in some cases warning signs regarding any pitfalls along the way. My words are born from my own experiences and my own boxing journey.
I would describe myself as ‘Old School’ in terms of boxing, simply because I know when I plied my trade there was no England Boxing as it is now, and also professional-coach licensing has upped it’s game over recent years thanks to the diligence of the British Boxing Board of Control.
However, some things never change in boxing and that’s where my own platform lies. I keep my tabs on current boxing through people I know who are currently in both boxing disciplines both amateur and professional. Whichever sport your choose, be it boxing or something else, coaching is coaching, it’s a skill-set all of it’s own, a challenge in it’s own right, and because you have a piece of paper doesn’t mean you can rest on your laurels. You need to keep yourself as best as you can, constantly at the cutting edge of the sport’s developments, interpretation of the rules and any recent training developments. You owe it to your boxers and to yourself.
There is and should be a personal sense of professional development. The sport is always bigger than you and it will leave you behind as it moves on unless you apply yourself and continually maximise your coaching skills. If you are not a people person then make yourself one, if you are deficient in training methods then improve them and educate yourself to a higher standard, if you don’t see your boxer as an athlete then prepare for them to lose contests. Know the rules! The stakes are high and being able to demonstrate if challenged that you are actively leading by example is a minimum requirement of a good coach.
This advice is not just about good coaching on a technical level, it relates very much indeed to the welfare and safety of your boxers at all age groups and levels of ability. We have to recognise that boxing is a contact sport, it carries risk, but everyone involved must be able to demonstrate that welfare and safety is the number one priority whether boxer or coach, not only coaches, boxers also have an accountability for welfare and safety issues by knowing the rules of the sport and the rules of the gym.
I have always said to anyone seeking advice or mentoring, if the unthinkable should ever happen, and severe injury or a fatality should occur, then you should always be prepared to look from the witness box at family and friends of all affected boxers, and know and be able to demonstrate that every decision you made was in the best interests of the boxer concerned, be able to evidence it with an audit trail of decision making policy that complied with the sport’s norms, guidance and rules, on both a strict interpretation of them combined with your governing body’s formal training plus your informed judgement that all decisions were justifiable to any reasonable person and potentially an expert witness in the sport of boxing who would most likely be the holder of an official position in the sport.
As I have said before, coaching is not boxing. Aspiring coaches and developing coaches should always be mindful that resting on your laurels is not recommended, neither is over familiarity with day to day boxing to a degree where casual judgement and unacceptable risk taking creeps in to decision making.
Neil Holland