Dr Anna Stodter is a Senior Lecturer in Sport Coaching at Leeds Beckett University, a rugby coach, and a researcher whose work sits right at the intersection of coach learning and applied coaching practice. Her research has explored how coaches filter and make sense of new ideas, how experimentation drives development, and more recently, how coaches can help players engage with contact in rugby more safely and confidently. She is one of those rare people who can take a complex academic idea and make it genuinely useful for coaches working at any level. This one was a real treat.

Key Messages

1. You are your own filter Anna's coffee filter analogy, published in the UK Coaching Applied Research Journal, is one of the most useful frameworks for understanding coach learning you'll come across. The idea is simple but profound. Your biography; the sum of your experiences, values, beliefs and knowledge, acts like a filter for every new idea you encounter. Some things get rejected because they clash with what you already believe. Some sail straight through because you already do them. And some land in the middle, they feel relevant, they might just work, but they need adapting for your context before you taste them properly. Understanding your own filter is the starting point for becoming a more intentional learner.

2. Coaching is a swampy lowland, embrace it Drawing on the work of Donald Schon, Anna describes coaching not as a precise science with predictable outcomes, but as a constantly shifting environment where the ground is always moving beneath your feet. That's not a problem to be solved, it's the nature of the work. And it means that experimentation isn't optional. Trying things out, tweaking, adapting, sometimes rejecting and starting again - that reflective cycle is how coaches grow. The coaches who thrive are the ones who get comfortable with not always knowing what's coming next.

3. Take a learning snack One of the most immediately stealable ideas in this conversation. You don't need to overhaul your entire coaching practice to keep developing. Anna introduces the idea of the learning snack. A small, intentional moment in a session where you try something new, notice what happens, and reflect on it. It could be a different type of question, filming yourself for the first time, or asking your athletes to rate their confidence at the start and end of a session. Small bites, consistently taken, add up to real development over time.

Some other things…

The coffee filter in full Anna's original research followed football coaches over the course of a year, tracking how they engaged with new ideas and what actually changed in their practice. The coffee filter metaphor emerged as a way of bringing that theory to life. You can find the full diagram and explanation in the UK Coaching Applied Research Journal, Volume 8. Well worth a read.

Film yourself coaching Anna's game plan contribution is a simple but important one. Film yourself coaching. It's confronting, there's nowhere to hide, and your voice never sounds like it does in your head. But the perspective it offers is like nothing else. Watch it back with a colleague, pick one thing to focus on, and just chat through what you see. Anna used it to count the types of questions she was asking - and what she found genuinely surprised her. You might be surprised too.

Contact Confident Anna has been working on a brilliant freely available resource for rugby coaches called Contact Confident, developed with colleague Dr Katrina MacDonald and in collaboration with World Rugby. It brings together principles from judo and other contact sports to help coaches build player confidence with contact. Gradually, safely, and without it feeling like a big scary event. Short, sharp one-minute videos that coaches can dip into and adapt for their context. Find it on the Leeds Beckett University website.

Get in Touch

Tom's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/

Anna's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-anna-stodter-990a0855/

Welcome to the Game Plan Coaching Podcast

Dr Pete Olusoga is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Sheffield Hallam University, a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society, and a sport psychology consultant. His award-winning PhD explored stress and coping in elite sports coaching, and his research has spent over a decade asking the questions that matter for coaches: what causes burnout, how do we recognise it, and what can we do about it? He also hosts his own brilliant podcast, Eighty Percent Mental.

Three Key Messages

1. Burnout isn't a you problem: One of the most important reframes in this conversation. Pete is clear, burnout is a perfectly normal and rational response to an environment that demands too much. It's not a sign of weakness or individual failure. Yes, there are things coaches can do for themselves, but there is also a real organisational responsibility to look after the people within it.

2. The superhero complex: Pete introduces this idea from his research - an unhealthy obsession with taking on too much, giving everything, and never stopping to recover. Coaching is a giving profession by nature, but if you keep giving without ever replenishing, the wheels will eventually come off.

3. Slow down to respond, not react: Pete's game-changing advice is deceptively simple. Slowing down - your breathing, your thinking, your responses - creates what he calls a choice point. Instead of reacting to stress, you get to respond to it. Those small pauses, the micro-breaks, the third spaces, the 30 seconds of silence before you walk through the front door, they add up. Rest and recovery aren't luxuries. They're a performance strategy.

Something else worth knowing

The stress that creeps Pete explains why burnout so often catches coaches off guard. Stress doesn't always arrive all at once. It inches up gradually, and we accommodate each small increase without really noticing. Until one day, one extra thing tips everything over. Understanding how you personally respond to stress -physically, mentally, behaviourally - is one of the most valuable things you can do.

Get in Touch

Tom's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/

Pete's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peteolusoga/

Eighty Percent Mental Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/eighty-percent-mental/id1528861331

Russell Earnshaw, known to most as Rusty, is one of the most influential coach developers working in sport today. Starting out in rugby, he now works across multiple sports and environments, from Premier League football academies to New Zealand, Canada, the US and beyond. He's the kind of person who makes you think differently about coaching within about five minutes of talking to him.

1. The best coaches see the world through the eyes of the learner Rusty's game plan contribution is rooted in a simple but profound idea from Roger Neyburn's book Experts. As coaches develop, they move from being focused on themselves to being genuinely curious about the experience of every individual in front of them. His challenge to coaches is to pick one player, watch their experience for the duration of a session, and ask yourself honestly; was that good enough?

2. Expertise is about having more options A recurring theme throughout the conversation is that great coaches aren't working from a checklist. They're noticing more, seeing more, and responding with a wider range of options than less experienced coaches. Rusty's advice? Deliberately expose yourself to different environments, different sports, different ages and abilities. Every experience adds to your toolkit.

3. Make problems visible Rusty's game-changing advice is as practical as it gets. Use bibs, headbands, scoreboards, and simple constraints to make the key problems in your session impossible to ignore, for players and for yourself. When the challenge is visible, players engage with it, problem-solve around it, and coaches don't drift away from it. Simple, effective, and immediately stealable.

Pick one player. Watch their experience for an entire session, minute by minute. What did that look and feel like for them? Then ask yourself how you're going to make sure every player in your group is having an experience worth coming back for.

Get in touch

Tom's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/

Rusty's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/russell-earnshaw-66161020/

The Magic Academy Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-magic-academy/id1434710237