Victorian coaching communities: exemplars of traditional coaching practice

Drawing primarily on their own experiences and the mores of oral tradition, nineteenth century coaches accumulated a range of techniques and sport-specific practices related to both skill development and physical preparation. Coaches also experimented in applying emerging knowledge. In doing so, they intuitively accepted or rejected appropriate material, thereby adding to a traditional body of craft knowledge. In contrast to ‘professional knowledge’, this craft knowledge was ‘knowing in action’; a feel for coaching developed with and from experience which appears to have been embedded within informal structures created by coaches engaging in a process of collective learning. Using Victorian examples, this paper highlights stability in traditional coaching methods and the longevity of coaching communities based on experiential knowledge. Although societal and economic developments, together with scientific and technological advances, have facilitated significant changes over the last two hundred years, coaching practices remain distinguished by continuity rather than novelty.