What are the roots of Coaching, how did the field get started?
The roots of professional coaching can be traced back to the Inner Game books of the mid-1970’s. In these books, W. Timothy Gallwey suggested a paradigm shift in sports coaching. He had noticed that clients self-corrected when he coached with open questions, instead of catching errors and offering suggestions. In fact, when a client listened to a suggestion and tried, performance diminished. When a client relaxed and held a picture and feeling of the end result, and allowed the body to create that result, the client improved. The system had corrected, without knowing it had ever been in error, unselfconsciously. The message in The Inner Game of Golf, The Inner Game of Tennis, and Inner Skiing is the same, “Neither mastery nor satisfaction can be found in the playing of any game without giving some attention to the relatively neglected skills of the inner game. This is the game that takes place in the mind of the client, and it is played against such obstacles as lapses in concentration
