One of the principal reasons for India's non-performance in the sporting ecosystem has been the lack of knowledge. It is not that we are not diligent with our work but, the bigger problem is that there is no work that has been done for this section of the
platform. If you take the lifestyle or the life cycle of an average athlete in India it starts from school where he starts paying more attention to being outside the classroom and paying more attention to sports. This develops into a regular habit and though sports are prioritised, the emphasis on studies is considerably reduced.
The trend continues while the athlete grows from an amateur and a beginner to intermediate, elite and then gradually the performance starts decelerating. This continues till the athlete finally understands that he would be unable to continue competing to the same standards as he used to. It is at this stage that he decides to stop competing and look for alternate career options for his livelihood. When he looks for alternate career options he understands that due to his preoccupation with sports he has been unable to continue upskilling himself in education or other vocations. He then turns to the only vocation that he knows and understands, which is sports. He also starts looking at helping out the coach in the capacity of an assistant coach or an instructor and then upgrading himself to a better level. It is then that he also thinks of starting an academy for himself which is usually the dream of every coach.
There is nothing new or unique that I am speaking here but there is definitely a fact that the understanding of an athlete's life-cycle will help us bridge the gap which exists between India and other nations.
We always know that for an athlete if he has any doubts about a procedure or a process or he has a problem there is a lot of support available through the coach through a psychologist through a physiotherapist so on and so forth. These are different components that support an athlete’s journey. These pillars of support are people who have had a body of work in the sport which is what they pass on to the athlete. So the athlete by himself does not need to worry about a lot of knowledge and understanding because his doubts are cleared by his support system. But when it comes down to the coach he needs to rely on his knowledge of the sport as an athlete and also to understand and hone the skills of coaching an athlete. So the coach is primarily reliant on support material which comes through various certifications and trainings that he attends as well as knowledge which is a part of the Internet. And this is exactly where it gets tricky for the Indian athletes and coaches.
Majority of research done for sports is done abroad. The use of technology, not just for performance, but to even understand the sporting system as well as new SOP’s, modes of thought, data points, structured thought process, structured curriculum, etc. are thought of conceived and formulated abroad. There is rarely any research which happens in India and is translated into languages that the local coaches will understand. For that matter many of the certifications and curricula available for coaches to enhance their knowledge, have not been upgraded for the past 20 to 40 years. This is where we find the biggest gap between Indian coaches and global best practices. Also the basic understanding of the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, biomechanics, mathematics, logic, etc is something which is difficult to grasp for the average coach who has ignored his studies at the school level. For most coaches in the Indian ecosystem owning and operating a laptop, researching, analysing solutions, coming up with basic algorithms for problem-solving etc are more challenging than other problems combined.
It is quite often that coaches/experts from abroad are brought in to train and impart knowledge to coaches in India there are also cases where coaches from India go abroad for advance level training. The coaches and their understanding of the game often serves as the criterion for the selection for these training programmes. What is often not considered is that proficiency in understanding English as a medium of instruction and the basic principles, theorems and their corollaries, based on which the sport functions. The Indian sporting ecosystem is yet to understand the benefits of meritocracy as well as a consistent succession order planning system to form the pyramid of high-performance process.
To counter a major problem of bridging the knowledge gap bridge courses need to be created which would lay a foundation at a very basic level for coaches to understand the different fields and subjects which affect their sport & their game. Also international terms, terminologies, theories, best practices and SOP’s need to be translated into local native languages for an easier grasp of the subject by the coach.
The goal of anyone who is in the sports education & management industry should be to create content which can be used by coaches to further their knowledge and to be able to import it in a meaningful way and an implementable manner to the athlete. It is not the coach's job to garner the knowledge which is beyond his reach, we as a sports education and management industry should act as facilitators of this knowledge to coaches, administrators and other support staff so that they can ensure a much better performance from their athletes. If it has happened for so many years and still continues to be one of the major obstacles of high-performance growth in the Indian sporting ecosystem then we as an industry would have failed to do our job.
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