Reframing the Role of the Personal Trainer.

‘ I argued that exploring the world with our hands, testing our ideas by building them, role playing, and countless other activities are all natural characteristics of children at play. By the time we enter the adult world, however, we have lost most of these precious talents. The first place this begins to happen is at school. The focus on analytical and convergent thinking in education is so dominant that most students leave school with the belief that creativity is unimportant or that it is the privilege of a few talented oddballs.’

Tim Brown, Change By Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation.

The Power of the Superpower. Part 1.

There is a problem with player engagement for the less enthusiastic students required to attend sport sessions. Every day they have to spend their precious time attending sports practice. They have been told that it will be good for their health, that it will be good for them to get outside away from the classroom, but really it means nothing to them.

It falls upon the coach, then , to find things for them to do in order to engage them in the activity.

This is the problem I had to constantly solve.

Then one day I was observing Eric and his friend hanging out at the back of a game. They were minding their own business, clearly not engaged. I wanted to find a solution to their non-engagement.

So I got a Superpower out of my bag and presented it to Eric. I told him the value of this Superpower and what it would mean to his team when he used it.

The result was that Eric became the central focus of his team. He became their new hero because he was so powerful.

Because of that his friends began to follow him whenever he had the Superpower in the game.

Because of that, Eric’s teammates wanted to try the Superpower for themselves. The Superpower now became the new focus of all the players attention.It became very valuable for winning the game, but also as a topic for their imagination and more creative uses for it. Could they make it into a Super-Superpower? If it became to powerful, how could anyone stop it, and so on.

Until finally I and the players realized that engagement can be anything we want it to be. We can create it out of nothing. Just introduce a Superpower and see what happens.