There is a strange insistence that participation and performance are entirely distinct and never the twain shall meet. But is there really no common ground to be found here? I will argue that participation and performance are NOT in fact mutually exclusive - especially in the case of youth sport. There is in fact plenty of overlap. So why should we keep them apart? Is it possible that bringing participation and performance back under the same roof might provide benefits in both directions?

We figure things out best when it's done in dialogue with others. This is exemplified by the dialectic process - that is, the good faith sharing of diverging views, exchanging the best arguments supporting those views, all for the purpose of revealing new insights.

This has a few implications as well as some practical applications.

The inclination to question is not common - looking back, most of us would admit that we uncritically accepted what we were taught. There is a general assumption that authority figures know what they are doing, so it may not necessarily occur to us that the consensus view that is espoused might be flawed or even untrue. Yet it is always worth allowing for the possibility that the prevailing view may not necessarily have a sound basis or at least might be missing something important. It might serve us well to consciously foster in ourselves and others a readiness to challenge preconceived ideas and the received wisdom, simply in the interests of our own enlightenment. More broadly, it merits highlighting that willingness to question and to offer competing ideas are necessary ingredients for progress. Clearly this has some important implications for leaders and organisations, as well as for the professions and fields of study that we are part of.

Running is an activity with vast participation. Running features prominently in sports and athletic events. Aside from athletes in running events, running is the primary mode of locomotion for the majority of field and court sports. Even when this is not the case, running often still features in the dryland training performed by athletes in ‘non-running’ sports. Beyond sport, we must also consider the enormous numbers of recreational runners and those for whom running is a popular form of exercise for health and fitness. Part of the popularity of running is its lack of barriers to participation: it is low cost and does not require any facilities or others to participate, so there is a low bar for entry.

Yet despite all this, we have a persisting problem in that despite being a ‘natural’ form of locomotion there are disproportionately high rates of injury associated with running in each of these populations.

I cannot recall exactly when I first had the realisation that the validation derived by performers within the virtual realm might have the power to displace their drive to achieve in real world competition, but it was certainly within the past decade. These suspicions have only been strengthened over the recent period from observing how performers (including high profile athletes) are choosing to conduct themselves online and in person. What is also becoming all the more apparent is the tension between two realms. The behaviours that are cultivated and encouraged in social media land are in many ways contrary to what is required to compete successfully against real life competitors and navigate real world challenges in the sport. Chasing social media fame is proving somewhat incompatible with pursuing real world goals in sport. Unregulated social media use in itself is also emerging as a threat to the performance and wellbeing of the individual, serving to make performers more fragile and exposing vulnerabilities. The rapid rise of these new features of performing in the digital era has caught many of us off guard, such that coaches, support staff and administrators are still grappling with what to do to manage and regulate performers’ online activities. Certainly we have been slow to recognise the dangers and to date we have largely failed to come up with effective countermeasures to mitigate the potential harms.

Observers have noted that the spirit of the age is trending towards safetyism, or the assertion that challenging situations and discomfiting experiences are something we should seek to protect young people from. Recent evidence suggests this trend is continuing apace; indeed the calls for such protections are coming from young people themselves - or at least from a vocal minority who claim to represent different sections of the population. Moreover these requests are often granted with some enthusiasm by increasingly indulgent institutions. At the very least trigger warnings are deemed necessary for anything that has the potential to cause upset or offend increasingly delicate sensibilities - unless of course the term ‘trigger warning’ is itself found to be too triggering for the individuals concerned.

Against this societal backdrop it was somewhat inevitable that those operating in the realms of coaching and performance sport might start running into issues. Perhaps the closest cousin of coaching is teaching. Those of us in the coaching profession would therefore do well to heed the alarming ideological shift in higher education (and education in general) notably in North America. There is a storm on the horizon.

In a number of ways the quest to return to sport after suffering ACL injury has all the hallmarks of a classical hero’s journey. The hero of the story faces a long and arduous journey to get back onto their feet after the original injury and then the daunting challenge of attempting to return to participating in the sport - and from there the epic-length saga continues as they must first survive the initial period after their return and then strive to get back to their best thereafter. As with any hero journey, the outcome is uncertain and success is far from assured. Indeed the element of uncertainty extends to the journey as a whole: whilst we can forewarn the athlete of some of the challenges they are likely to face, it is nevertheless something of a journey into the unknown. From the outset choosing to embark on this quest calls for a great deal of courage on the part of the athlete. What is assured is that the journey will test them and their resolve will certainly be challenged along the way. Whilst all this may seem like hyperbole, portraying the quest in these terms I think helps us to understand what the athlete faces and how we might best serve them in the endeavour.